Leaders of the Free World
Jul. 19th, 2005 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coalescentMusic and memory can be closely associated for me. The last time Elbow released an album, for instance, it was the summer of 2003, and I went to see them support PJ Harvey at one of that year's Eden Sessions. The songs from that album, Cast of Thousands--from the opening skitter of 'Ribcage' to, particularly, the rapturous close of 'Grace Under Pressure--always remind me of that trip, and that year.
I don't yet know, obviously, what memories Leaders of the Free World will bring back. Frankly, it could be anything: it's been my constant soundtrack for the past week, and I can't see it leaving rotation any time soon. Like all Elbow's albums, it's taken a few listens to get under my skin, but now it's well and truly wormed in.
If the phrase hadn't already been adopted and corrupted by The Verve, you'd have to call Elbow's music urban hymns. They write songs about city life, particularly British city life. And theirs is a landscape of extremes--shifting between despair and hope, riotous clamour and quiet reflection, night and day--sketched through Guy Garvey's extraordinary, bruised vocals. The songs tend to be gloriously lush (think 'Asleep In The Back', 'Scattered Black And Whites', 'Red') or bitterly robust ('Bitten By The Tailfly', 'Fallen Angel'). On their third album, the latter mode initially seems to dominate. It serves to make the moments of beauty that much more startling.
This is also a more straightforwardly angry album than the first two. As the title suggests, it's more political ('the leaders of the free world / are just little boys throwing stones'), but more blatantly than ever before all the lyrics are uneasy, sometimes ugly, full of social discontent. The clattering, creepy 'Forget Myself'--slated to be the first single!--is dark from the start ('They're pacing Piccadilly in packs again'), but it's in the thumping, Doves-esque chorus that its predatory protagonist makes himself fully apparent: 'No, I know / I won't forget you / But I'll forget myself / if the city will forgive me.' Later, 'Mexican Standoff' builds around a bristling riff (with something of the aggressiveness of Radiohead's 'National Anthem'), and mocks the absurd hollowness of the macho posturing that leads to post closing-time street brawls.
And yet, sometimes, Elbow still find things to cling to. Even as their world falls apart, even if only fleetingly. On 'Station Approach', all Garvey needs is 'to be in the town where they know what I'm like / and don't mind'. On 'The Everthere', a rumbling lulllaby of a song, punctuated by metallic pizzicato, he notes 'all the angels've taken dives / leaving you the only one' (Elbow's idea of a romantic song has always been an idiosyncratic one). And on the almost obnoxiously beautiful 'Great Expectations' he finds solace in the memory of things lost: 'You were the sun in my sunday morning / telling me never to go / so I'll live on the smile / and move down the aisle / of the last bus home'. It's an astonishing, soaring song; and that final chorus is the finest moment of an album full of fine moments.
I don't yet know, obviously, what memories Leaders of the Free World will bring back. Frankly, it could be anything: it's been my constant soundtrack for the past week, and I can't see it leaving rotation any time soon. Like all Elbow's albums, it's taken a few listens to get under my skin, but now it's well and truly wormed in.
If the phrase hadn't already been adopted and corrupted by The Verve, you'd have to call Elbow's music urban hymns. They write songs about city life, particularly British city life. And theirs is a landscape of extremes--shifting between despair and hope, riotous clamour and quiet reflection, night and day--sketched through Guy Garvey's extraordinary, bruised vocals. The songs tend to be gloriously lush (think 'Asleep In The Back', 'Scattered Black And Whites', 'Red') or bitterly robust ('Bitten By The Tailfly', 'Fallen Angel'). On their third album, the latter mode initially seems to dominate. It serves to make the moments of beauty that much more startling.
This is also a more straightforwardly angry album than the first two. As the title suggests, it's more political ('the leaders of the free world / are just little boys throwing stones'), but more blatantly than ever before all the lyrics are uneasy, sometimes ugly, full of social discontent. The clattering, creepy 'Forget Myself'--slated to be the first single!--is dark from the start ('They're pacing Piccadilly in packs again'), but it's in the thumping, Doves-esque chorus that its predatory protagonist makes himself fully apparent: 'No, I know / I won't forget you / But I'll forget myself / if the city will forgive me.' Later, 'Mexican Standoff' builds around a bristling riff (with something of the aggressiveness of Radiohead's 'National Anthem'), and mocks the absurd hollowness of the macho posturing that leads to post closing-time street brawls.
And yet, sometimes, Elbow still find things to cling to. Even as their world falls apart, even if only fleetingly. On 'Station Approach', all Garvey needs is 'to be in the town where they know what I'm like / and don't mind'. On 'The Everthere', a rumbling lulllaby of a song, punctuated by metallic pizzicato, he notes 'all the angels've taken dives / leaving you the only one' (Elbow's idea of a romantic song has always been an idiosyncratic one). And on the almost obnoxiously beautiful 'Great Expectations' he finds solace in the memory of things lost: 'You were the sun in my sunday morning / telling me never to go / so I'll live on the smile / and move down the aisle / of the last bus home'. It's an astonishing, soaring song; and that final chorus is the finest moment of an album full of fine moments.
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Date: 2005-07-19 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-19 09:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 10:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 10:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-20 10:51 am (UTC)Also: this is very amusing considering your attitude to 'acquiring' music when we saw them in Cornwall.. ;)
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Date: 2005-07-20 11:31 am (UTC)