13th Floor New Song Of The Day: Elbow – Golden Slumbers

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Elbow’s Guy Garvey’s voice is perfectly suited for this Beatles tune, originally part of the medley that took up most of side two of Abbey Road.

Golden Slumbers will appear as a bonus track on Elbow’s upcoming Best Of album, due out November 24th.

Here’s the record company blurb:

Elbow are set to release a handpicked collection of their best moments to date on 24th November. The album, which covers two CDs in its deluxe form, features tracks from all the band’s seven studio albums to date and highlights their incredible musical output over the last eighteen years from the release of the Newborn Ep in 1999. Also featured on the album as a bonus track is the band’s version of The Beatles ‘Golden Slumbers’, as heard on the current John Lewis Christmas advert directed by Michel Gondry.

Part of the reasoning behind the band compiling their favourite tracks to date was their desire to continue to find new listeners for their music as Guy Garvey explains: “Best Ofs are a good way of introducing new fans to a big back catalogue. My first Leonard Cohen album was ‘The Best Of’, same with Fleetwood Mac and Nick Drake. It took ages for us to decide what should go on ours but we got there in the end. We are really proud of this, it’s full of memories”

The Best Of comes in two versions. The standard, one cd version, features the global hits ‘One Day Like This’ and ‘Grounds For Divorce’ alongside recent radio favourite ‘Magnificent (She Says)’ from the band current studio album and UK Number One, ‘Little Fictions’. Earlier work is represented by live favourites ‘Mirrorball’, ‘Scattered Black and Whites’, ‘Leaders Of The Free World’ and ‘Lippy Kids’, ‘a gorgeous meditation on adolescence’ as The Guardian would have it and a stand out moment at all elbow performances.

The second CD in the deluxe release goes further into the band’s history and album releases, again spanning their entire career to date. The song that first brought the band to mass public attention, ‘Newborn’, is here alongside its follow up and fellow NME Single Of The Week, ‘Any Day Now’ and ‘The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’; the song the band performed live on the night that they won the 2008 Mercury Music Prize for ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. This disc also contains the band’s most recent original recording, ‘Kindling (Fickle Flame)’ featuring John Grant.

The album highlights an incredible ongoing career which has encompassed the Ivor Novello winning ‘One Day Like This’ and ‘Grounds for Divorce’, the quadruple platinum album, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ and two UK Number One albums; 2014’s ‘The Take Off and Landing of Everything’ and this year’s ‘Little Fictions’. In that time, the band have won 2008’s Mercury Music Prize (for ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’), the 2009 BRITS ‘Best British Group’ and a host of NME, Q and Mojo Awards.

elbow have been lauded for one of the landmark Pyramid Stage performances at Glastonbury Festival, collaborated with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra and broken the BBC red button record twice for that BBC Concert Orchestra show and their home town Manchester Cathedral show. In 2012 they were commissioned to write ‘First Steps’ which soundtracked the BBC’S London Olympics TV coverage with the band also performing at the closing ceremony in the Olympic Stadium to a global television audience of 750 million people.  This year’s secret appearance at Glastonbury’s Park Stage drew a record crowd on site and was the most watched set from the festival on BBC4.

Always a band that has attracted deserved critical praise for their recordings, (elbow were the first act in history to receive four consecutive 9/10 album reviews from NME), this best of album is the perfect introduction to the amazing musical legacy to date of one of the country’s most beloved and most successful acts, demonstrating that most rare thing in modern music; a band whose story and influence continues to grow with every release.

The Best Of is available as a standard, one disc, CD, a deluxe, two disc CD and a digital download on 24th November. Advance purchasers of the digital download will receive ‘Golden Slumbers’ on receipt of order.

Tracklisting for The Best Of is as follows

Disc One (Standard album release):
Grounds for Divorce – Magnificent (She Says) – Lippy Kids -One Day Like This – The Bones of You – My Sad Captains – Leaders of the Free World – Mirrorball – Fugitive Motel- New York Morning – Great Expectations – The Birds – Scattered Black and Whites – Golden Slumbers

Disc Two (Deluxe Version Only):
Any Day Now – Fly Boy Blue / Lunette – Weather to Fly – Station Approach – Switching Off – Little Fictions
This Blue World – Kindling (Fickle Flame) featuring John Grant – Newborn – Puncture Repair- The Night Will Always Win – Starlings – The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver – Dear Friends

 

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