mon 06/01/2025

Elbow

Albums of the Year 2024: The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy

Does absolutely everything have to get more difficult with each passing year? Apparently so. The amount of time I’ve spent deciding which of the many truly excellent albums I’ve reviewed this year should get the ‘top prize’ has, frankly, been...

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Album: Elbow - Audio Vertigo

On this, their 10th album, the melodious Mancunians started at the drum kit and built from there. This is no bad thing. The overall effect is wide-ranging, surprising and altogether more uplifting than either the delicious despairing ...

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CD: Elbow - Little Fictions

Elbow fans will remember how 2014's The Take Off and Landing of Everything took the band's existing sound and twisted it a fraction. The result was a piece of work that, above all, felt powerfully uneasy. Not simply because of the personal...

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Elbow, Roundhouse

Punctually, following a tension-building countdown, Elbow entered the blue-lit stage at London’s legendary Roundhouse, beers in hand, and gestured the 1500-strong audience into a mass toast. With his slight stoop, soft Manchester accent and wayward...

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CD: Elbow - The Take Off and Landing of Everything

They've been indie and they've been (quite) pop, but this time the band has firmly nailed its colours to the art-rock mast. The Take Off and Landing of Everything is a subtle, reflective piece which befits the age and intelligence of its...

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2011: Anthemic Elbow, Iranian drama, and Fear and Loathing in Elsinore

The Barbican has always led the way in London in international theatre programming. The year there ended on a high, with Thomas Ostermeier’s Hamlet from the Schaubühne laying down new markers for transgressive commitment. I was sceptical about it...

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CD of the Year: Elbow – Build a Rocket Boys!

The Mercury-winning Seldom Seen Kid was a truly formidable recording to follow. And when the metronomic beat of extended play opening track "The Birds" kicked in on Build a Rocket Boys! I thought about giving Elbow the elbow. There was a little too...

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Elbow, O2 Arena

Is Guy Garvey really as lovely as he seems? I hope so. Last night, on the first of two nights for the Bury band at the O2 Arena, their lead singer, this big bearded bear of a man, came across as clever, funny, confident, warm, positive and...

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