Elbow
Asleep in the Back

THE REVIEW

Slow, dreamy songs with a taste for words. They could be the Tindersticks.
Intimate songs, with strings and brass in the background.
The title track is a soft spleen, dragged out, which degenerates into a cacophony of brass towards the end.

With each listen, one wonders what they are doing. And the taste for the dark side, for things that ended badly. Like in the records of Tindersticks or Arab Strap, in some way, it is a cathartic experience; the events recounted are past, we lick our wounds, but we are alive.
Songs of calm resignation. And the attention to detail, as in the wonderful video of the title track, in a puppet theater, with the real faces of Elbow mounted too large on the puppets. That play.

"Oh you had to ask didn't you. Oh you had to know".

The other tracks are at times spectral; on initial listens, Guy Garvey's voice sounds like Peter Gabriel, but the more you listen, the more you discover his identity.

Rough songs, in lyrics and sounds, with strange melodies. "Can't Stop" could be a Radiohead song with vocal parts climbing against chunky guitars à la Velvet Underground.

A great debut nonetheless, especially for the immense "Asleep in the Back".

Note: some versions of the album do not have the title track and "Can't Stop". No one knows why.