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4.4/5

Like the album name suggests, elbow take us down a dizzying journey of inventive tension – with one wrong move destined for us to swerve off road.

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“I’m proud that we’re still doing it together 33 years after we met, and hopefully for another God knows how many.”

Guy Garvey on Audio Vertigo

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OVERVIEW

Elbow are a collective who are very much part of the furniture now. Finding fans from their 2001 debut, Asleep in the Back, the eclectic five-piece have always had a vivid imagination when it comes to just standard guitar rock, boasting an orchestral sound playing off Garvey’s abundant vocals. While it was 2011’s The Seldom Seen Kid that laid their destiny in play UK summer festivals for time to come, their approach to subsequent albums thereafter resulted the band becoming a bedrock in the UK alternative rock scene.

Processing joy and despair through their music is a real characteristic for their music at this point. One of which members Garvey (vocals) and Potter (keyboardist/pianist) are quite content with. It should come as no surprise then that their tenth, Audio Vertigo, is ultimately cut from the same cloth. Surrounding themselves whoever’s in trouble, Audio Vertigo traipses a pure melancholic line throughout, as Garvey lands his most darkest lyrics yet, all swathed behind strong African poly-rhythm presence and absorbed guitar inflections. While previous album (Flying Dream 1, 2021) died before it had a chance to take off, it can be argued that AUDIO VERTIGO however, shows signs of it being Elbow’s best in years…

SONG-TO-SONG

Certainly so, there’s no better way to kick off an album than, Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years. A dark jump-start of hypnotic bass and zealous guitar workings-out, it has all the makings of the band back to their best. We’re then presented with Lovers’ Leap – a sticky song in terms of percussive titbits and strutting horns, it paints a coastal painting of torn love as Garvey croons , “They can name the crater we make after you / and sell little statues of us / Though there isn’t an artist alive / Who could get your eyes, oh-oh..”

Balu is a rising rip-roar anthem in African rhythms and searing synth that makes it albeit funky as it does stressful again. Very Heaven does its job in combatting the lull while Her to the Earth is a beautiful instrumental exposition in-between acts. The lurching vertigo suffocates us once more on The Picture with a lot going on, as it has the hall-markings to be one of the best on here, as it stretches the limits of both band and ensemble. Some of the best glued-together records are those that have some of their best sounds swept throughout the usual 12-track and not just all lumped in the first half. Good Blood Mexico City is a welcoming surprise this low down, a real alt-rock number swept with explosive drums and Beach Boys-esque chorals. The album ends after the lovers’ have leapt and have landed in the waters below with From the River – polishing off a highly-strung, smoothly-run record.

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British rock quintet gather their thoughts once again in contemplative tenth with its own host of empathetic characters.

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This is your Album of the Week.