Elbow – Little Fictions (Polydor)

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Seven albums in and Elbow sound as engaged and enthusiastic about the music they create as ever. There is a maturity and richness to the musical layering on this album that rewards repeated listening. It really is the sound of a band at the top of their game. 

If 2014’s  The Take Off and Landing of Everything chronicled the journey  of  vocalist Guy Garvey as he negotiated the murky waters of a relationship break up, Little Fictions finds him gloriously in love. 2016 saw him marry actress Rachael Stirling and this seems to have brought about  a romantic optimism lacking on the bands previous effort. By contrast the departure of original drummer Richard Jupp last year doesn’t seem to have affected  the band much at all. Their ability  to build songs from clever rhythmical bones remains undimmed. Take the mid album track Firebrand and Angel which starts with a repeating drum figure, adds keyboards, vocal harmonies and layer upon layer until it is pointless for you to resist singing along. It reminds me very much of  early Blue Nile.

If you are looking for something different from previous work (And I for one don’t want bands making the same album over and over) however, it is that there are no obvious upbeat anthems like Leaders of The Free World or Grounds For Divorce. In fact most songs could be described as falling into the gentle ballad category. An exception is first single Magnificent (She Says) which is positively a racehorse compared to the rest of the album. Beautiful string arrangements and a hooky guitar line  pull you into a song that gets the heart pumping with that feeling of glorious wonder and every time Guy Garvey sings “It’s all gonna be magnificent…” you are with him 100 per cent.

Current single and next track Gentle Storm, with it’s refrain “Fall in love with me everyday,”  also concerns matters of the heart. It  is accompanied by a video mixing dissolving faces of band members and actors that is clearly inspired that by Godley & Creme’s classic Cry and features Benedict Cumberbatch. All Disco is inspired by a Black Francis offhand statement where he declared “…you have punk rock, you have rock, you have blues, you have soul, it’s all disco.” But don’t expect Loud/Quiet guitars and furious riffing, more like a chiming circular guitar phrase and a choir of voices. The foregrounding of the guitar work of Mark Potter is really noticeable on this track and Head for Supplies which is pretty much just Mark’s filigree like guitar work and Guy Garvey’s vocals.

Title track Little Fiction builds and builds over its 8 min 25 sec and is awash with  psychedelic flourishes and a squawking keyboard denouement that wouldn’t be out of place on an Eno album. Apparently the longest song in their canon, it really stretches out into the home straight of the final two minutes. Things wind up with the gentle shuffle of Kindling that flickers like a late night fire discussion until the strings make you tilt your head  to the stars and listen to the decaying guitar until the underlying footstep rhythm falls over.  Listen carefully and you can hear one of the band declare “We got that good… we got a loop out of it” He is describing the repeated act of dropping bags of Kindling over and over to create that footstep rhythm.

In a world that may seem to not always have our best interests at heart, we sometimes need a guide, an expression of pain, loss, hope, glory and love to keep us going.  Elbow  manages to offer all of that in the world they create on Little Fictions. Whether it’s Guy Garvey’s open-hearted vocals, the economical but crucial rhythm section, string washes or guitar hooks, I found myself drawn into the albums well crafted melodies and rhythmical ideas from the opening  note. When it finished I wanted to dive back in straight away. A great addition to 2017’s unfolding musical landscape.

Brent Giblin

The 13th Floor
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