elbow, my boys. I love them, absolutely adore. You can quote me as saying that Guy Garvey is one of the top few (as in: top two) songwriters alive today. I don't remember exactly how I found them, but I think they opened for someone back in the early 00s, right after their 2001 release, Asleep in the Back. In short, I am telling you that I liked them way before you did (and you, too. Yeah, even you). Every album they have ever made has been nothing short of beautiful.
In 2008, they won the british Mercury Music prize (for their fourth studio album, The Seldom Seen Kid), which still shocks me a little because I always kind of forget that they're not mine, that they're not just something made just for me to fold up and carry around in my back pocket. Every single word, every single note has been written just for me, I promise you. I've been known to say that Elbow was the most underrated band of the last decade, but I guess they're a little bit appropriately-rated now.
This album, "build a rocket boys!" seems to reflect upon their experiences growing up, and all at once I feel so many things, so many conflicting things. It's beautiful and sweet to think about my childhood in Northern England, and it's sad to think about the adolescence and young adulthood and beyond that I didn't have there. But mostly, it's just a collection of songs about home, about having a home and loving your home, but also about feeling so floaty and disconnected and apart from home. And anyone can relate to that. Even in San Diego. (I guess).
(One long June/I came down from the trees/and kerbstone cool/You were a freshly painted angel/Walking on walls/Stealing booze and hour-long hungry kisses/And nobody knows me at home anymore)
(click the album cover for listeny samples on the pitchfork blurb).
Manchester: fuck the what, ftw for sure.
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