Artist:   Elbow
Title:    Build A Rocket Boys!
Label:    Fiction
Genre:    Rock
Bitrate:  169kbit av.
Time:     00:51:38
Size:     67.18 mb
Rip Date: 2011-03-03
Str Date: 2011-03-07

01. The Birds                                                     8:03
02. Lippy Kids                                                    6:06
03. With Love                                                     4:12
04. Neat Little Rows                                              5:40
05. Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl                                      3:18
06. The Night Will Always Win                                     4:24
07. High Ideals                                                   5:39
08. The River                                                     2:51
09. Open Arms                                                     4:53
10. The Birds (Reprise)                                           1:31
11. Dear Friends                                                  5:01

Release Notes:

The shelves of your local newsagent currently offer at least one
unlikely sight. A chubby, bearded man in a suit stares out from the
cover of Britain's biggest-selling music magazine. His face, which
looks, perhaps, a little older than his 37 years, is arranged in the
kind of lugubrious expression that was once the trademark of a fellow
Greater Mancunian, Les Dawson: he has the air of a man who's just been
given a court summons rather than top billing.

Singer Guy Garvey's elevation to cover-boy status is not the only
improbable aspect of Elbow's late-blooming success. You could argue
that in the current climate, late-blooming success itself is pretty
improbable: regularly appended to Elbow's name, the phrase "the
people's band" û with its weird implication that every other
double-platinum artist has a fanbase largely comprised of budgerigars
or golden retrievers û tells you more about journalists struggling to
come to terms with the baffling concept of a band that's got big after
four albums, rather than arriving in a blaze of glory, then vanishing
after 18 months. More specifically, Elbow belong in the pantheon of
artists who have got big as a result of one rather atypical song. That
song has certain Elbow traits, being tender and suffused with
melancholy: in the teeth of its adoption as a wedding anthem and
default finale to the kind of ghastly TV programme in which people
announce they're on "a journey", it's worth remembering One Day Like
This concerns a protagonist wistfully imagining how incredible it would
be to have it off once a year. But those not familiar with their
earlier oeuvre should note that before the deluge, Elbow's most
high-profile fan was probably John Cale, not a man you imagine spends a
lot of time punching the air to uplifting stadium rock.

Too old to have their heads turned by mainstream success, but too
big-hearted, maybe too grateful, to spurn it with a churlish
how-do-you-like-us-now gesture, Build a Rocket Boys! sees Elbow doing
perhaps the smartest thing you could under the circumstances: carrying
on regardless. You could argue that Neat Little Rows represents an
amalgam of the best-known moments of its predecessor, The Seldom Seen
Kid û the chorus soars towards the arena's upper tiers, the guitars
crunch as on Grounds for Divorce û and that Open Arms clearly has its
heart set on stirring vast crowds. But it goes about it via a
pleasingly serpentine route, with a lyric about a community centre û if
the nation takes it to its heart, it will presumably be the first
lighters-aloft anthem in history to mention both folding chairs and
finger rolls û a dinky synthesised backing that recalls the sound of
the combos who played on said community centre's stage, and the
unexpected arrival, one minute and three seconds in, of the HallΘ Youth
Choir.

Tellingly, the stuff about the buffet and the seating arrangements is
more emotionally affecting than the massed voices. What Elbow excel at
is alighting on small details and burnishing them into things of wonder
via deceptively complex arrangements (the episodic opener The Birds
demonstrates how skilful the band are at incorporating the influence of
their beloved prog rock, keyboard solo and all, without straying into
the territory of bombast and pomp; High Ideals deftly mixes
orchestration, a Bo Diddley beat and buzzing electronics) and Garvey's
permanently bruised tenor. And small details abound on Build a Rocket
Boys!, perhaps inevitably, given that the album is so imbued with a
nostalgic love of home û if anything, it's even more deeply rooted in
the north than its predecessor. Given that The Seldom Seen Kid featured
a duet with Richard Hawley that used racing pigeons as a metaphor for
success, that is no mean feat. Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl is an
unsentimental, but beautifully drawn vignette of Garvey's pre-fame
life, "with nothing to be proud of and nothing to regret", when he was
possessed only of a recently broken heart and a carefully counted
collection of "45 CDs". The album's emotional centre, however, is Lippy
Kids, a gorgeous meditation on adolescence that recognises both the
gauche awfulness of it all û the boozy aimlessness, the "simian stroll"
of the teenage boy û and the fact that you may never feel quite as
rawly alive again. "Do they know these days are golden?" ponders
Garvey, adding: "Build a rocket, boys!"

It slips into mawkishness once, on a reprise of The Birds that sets an
elderly vocalist against a cooing choral backdrop, an idea that rather
overdoes the album's theme of the passing of time. For the rest of its
50 minutes, Build a Rocket Boys! makes Elbow's success seem anything
but implausible. It may be that people drawn in by One Day Like This
hung around because they found music that, while less straightforward,
was warm and generous and inventive. If so, they'll find more of it
here.



This NFO File was rendered by NFOmation.net

Artist:   Elbow
Title:    Build A Rocket Boys!
Label:    Fiction
Genre:    Rock
Bitrate:  169kbit av.
Time:     00:51:38
Size:     67.18 mb
Rip Date: 2011-03-03
Str Date: 2011-03-07

01. The Birds                                                     8:03
02. Lippy Kids                                                    6:06
03. With Love                                                     4:12
04. Neat Little Rows                                              5:40
05. Jesus Is A Rochdale Girl                                      3:18
06. The Night Will Always Win                                     4:24
07. High Ideals                                                   5:39
08. The River                                                     2:51
09. Open Arms                                                     4:53
10. The Birds (Reprise)                                           1:31
11. Dear Friends                                                  5:01

Release Notes:

The shelves of your local newsagent currently offer at least one
unlikely sight. A chubby, bearded man in a suit stares out from the
cover of Britain's biggest-selling music magazine. His face, which
looks, perhaps, a little older than his 37 years, is arranged in the
kind of lugubrious expression that was once the trademark of a fellow
Greater Mancunian, Les Dawson: he has the air of a man who's just been
given a court summons rather than top billing.

Singer Guy Garvey's elevation to cover-boy status is not the only
improbable aspect of Elbow's late-blooming success. You could argue
that in the current climate, late-blooming success itself is pretty
improbable: regularly appended to Elbow's name, the phrase "the
people's band" – with its weird implication that every other
double-platinum artist has a fanbase largely comprised of budgerigars
or golden retrievers – tells you more about journalists struggling to
come to terms with the baffling concept of a band that's got big after
four albums, rather than arriving in a blaze of glory, then vanishing
after 18 months. More specifically, Elbow belong in the pantheon of
artists who have got big as a result of one rather atypical song. That
song has certain Elbow traits, being tender and suffused with
melancholy: in the teeth of its adoption as a wedding anthem and
default finale to the kind of ghastly TV programme in which people
announce they're on "a journey", it's worth remembering One Day Like
This concerns a protagonist wistfully imagining how incredible it would
be to have it off once a year. But those not familiar with their
earlier oeuvre should note that before the deluge, Elbow's most
high-profile fan was probably John Cale, not a man you imagine spends a
lot of time punching the air to uplifting stadium rock.

Too old to have their heads turned by mainstream success, but too
big-hearted, maybe too grateful, to spurn it with a churlish
how-do-you-like-us-now gesture, Build a Rocket Boys! sees Elbow doing
perhaps the smartest thing you could under the circumstances: carrying
on regardless. You could argue that Neat Little Rows represents an
amalgam of the best-known moments of its predecessor, The Seldom Seen
Kid – the chorus soars towards the arena's upper tiers, the guitars
crunch as on Grounds for Divorce – and that Open Arms clearly has its
heart set on stirring vast crowds. But it goes about it via a
pleasingly serpentine route, with a lyric about a community centre – if
the nation takes it to its heart, it will presumably be the first
lighters-aloft anthem in history to mention both folding chairs and
finger rolls – a dinky synthesised backing that recalls the sound of
the combos who played on said community centre's stage, and the
unexpected arrival, one minute and three seconds in, of the Hallé Youth
Choir.

Tellingly, the stuff about the buffet and the seating arrangements is
more emotionally affecting than the massed voices. What Elbow excel at
is alighting on small details and burnishing them into things of wonder
via deceptively complex arrangements (the episodic opener The Birds
demonstrates how skilful the band are at incorporating the influence of
their beloved prog rock, keyboard solo and all, without straying into
the territory of bombast and pomp; High Ideals deftly mixes
orchestration, a Bo Diddley beat and buzzing electronics) and Garvey's
permanently bruised tenor. And small details abound on Build a Rocket
Boys!, perhaps inevitably, given that the album is so imbued with a
nostalgic love of home – if anything, it's even more deeply rooted in
the north than its predecessor. Given that The Seldom Seen Kid featured
a duet with Richard Hawley that used racing pigeons as a metaphor for
success, that is no mean feat. Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl is an
unsentimental, but beautifully drawn vignette of Garvey's pre-fame
life, "with nothing to be proud of and nothing to regret", when he was
possessed only of a recently broken heart and a carefully counted
collection of "45 CDs". The album's emotional centre, however, is Lippy
Kids, a gorgeous meditation on adolescence that recognises both the
gauche awfulness of it all – the boozy aimlessness, the "simian stroll"
of the teenage boy – and the fact that you may never feel quite as
rawly alive again. "Do they know these days are golden?" ponders
Garvey, adding: "Build a rocket, boys!"

It slips into mawkishness once, on a reprise of The Birds that sets an
elderly vocalist against a cooing choral backdrop, an idea that rather
overdoes the album's theme of the passing of time. For the rest of its
50 minutes, Build a Rocket Boys! makes Elbow's success seem anything
but implausible. It may be that people drawn in by One Day Like This
hung around because they found music that, while less straightforward,
was warm and generous and inventive. If so, they'll find more of it
here.



This NFO File was rendered by NFOmation.net