ELBOW

Asleep In The Back [V2]

Asleep In The Back is not an album to take lightly. Elbow themselves certainly didn’t, especially considering they’ve been waiting to release it for almost three years. A legacy of collapsed record deals and shelved albums has only served to make this quintet stronger, in the process turning their debut album into one of the most hotly anticipated of the year, and not without reason.

There have already been two EPs that hinted at the craftsmanship to come. ‘Newborn’ and ‘Any Day Now’ are survivors from those early releases, the latter opening the album with a bruised swagger. The drumbeats strike home like bullets, Guy Garvey’s voice tangles up in their cross-fire and emerges somewhat languidly on the far side, while retaining an air of optimism.

You will find yourself singing plaintively along to current single, ‘Red’s recurring mantra of "You’re a tragedy starting to happen". You’ll soar along with the sepia-toned melancholia of ‘Scattered Black And Whites’, drift into the eerie ‘Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)’ and immerse yourself in the glorious ‘Powder Blue’. You’ll reel in the fallout from the jumble of junglebeats that make up ‘Bitten By The Tailfly’, whose gnawed guitar clippings could have been belched out of the arse-end of Radiohead’s ‘Just’: believe me, this is a good thing.

Even if Elbow never produce another minute of music, they have already created a record that should be around for many years to come.

John Walshe 0