Customer Reviews
Bliss! - By: ghostmoth, 05 Oct 2008 
I have Amazon to thank for bringing Elbow to my attention many years ago. I bought some CD or other & they did their cheeky "if you like that, you might like this ..." & recommended Elbow's debut album Asleep in the Back. I did something I have never done before or since & bought the CD without hearing a note just because I liked their name. And I loved the CD. I then bought Cast of Thousands - Grace Under Pressure is sublime - & Leaders of the Free World & reallly enjoyed both. Seldom Seen Kid is different though. It is by far their finest work yet & easily the best album I've heard this year. The lyrics & Guy Garvey's voice are wonderful. Grounds for Divorce & One Day Like This are so good they give you shivers but Mirrorballl is in a class of its own - pure bliss! I sincerely hope Elbow break the curse of the Mercury Music Prize & continue to produce music of this quality.
Simply a great album. - By: P. Bennett, 03 Oct 2008 I was recommended this by a chap who went to school with Guy Garvey. He couldn't praise it enough, although I did wonder how partisan he was...Then I heard "Grounds for Divorce" on Radcliffe & Maconie & that was it.
Very glad I bought it too, as it's now my favourite album of the year, by far. If it's true that their old record company passed on this, then they must be feeling pretty sick now.
The music is gorgeous,finely wrought stuff from a band that have grown together over the past 15 years or so, much in the same way as Radiohead. This music is an excellent counterpoint to the lyrics, which can be deeply effecting. So much so that I've even quoted them to my wife, it's that easy for them relate them to your own life. (Before you ask, that'll be the love songs on the album.)
The album moves from love songs to story songs & back again - the track order helps the dynamic of the album too.
I have an hour's drive to work, so I get to hear this in one sitting & invariably there is one track that I shalll be shouting it's welcome. As you do. At the moment it's "One Day Like This", but could easily be one of the other songs next week.
A masterpiece.
The Best of British - By: P. A. Kirk, 02 Oct 2008 Elbow have what it takes to become one of the biggest bands for some time.
Few bands have alll the ingredients but Elbow do, the biggest being the lyrics of Guy Garvey & that voice, that delivery.
They probably shouldn't have opened this album with 'Starlings' as it is impossible to get better than this I feel, after lonely piano, trumpets, backgrond vocals Garvey steps to the fore delivering lyrics so simple but so touching, this is why this man is a poet
'you are the only thing, in any room your ever in, i'm selfish, stubborn & too old'
'find a man thats truer than, find a man that needs you more than i'
The rest of the album is truly five star, & Elbow go from strength to strength. Four albums in & Garvey's songwriting shows no signs of drying up, long may it continue
Joint pain - By: Young Offender, 29 Sep 2008 
I know it's heretical, & I'll probably end up with about 100 unhelpful votes, but I do wonder whether Elbow are reallly that good. Admittedly this record is better than their debut, but it still contains too much in the way of sludgy, overlong, beery blokishness. In the same way that Dizzee Rascal's Mercury was an attempt by the white middle-class music industry to get down with the urban kids, so Elbow's is a patronising nod to a 'rather charming' Simon Armitage-ish North by the metropolitan media. Frankly, Cherry Ghost's debut does this kind of thing a lot more enjoyably.
Marvellous - By: Nick Sydenham, 29 Sep 2008 Elbow have been floating around on the edge of my musical world for some time now. An occasional track would appear on some free CD given away by a music magazine & I'd make a mental note to investigate them at some point in the future, but never did. Then I heard 'Grounds for Divorce' on another free CD & immediately looked to see who it was. So I bought the album. And it's absolutely superb, feeling like a 'complete' album, where every track fits into place. I can't see this being beaten as my favourite album of 2008.
