Album Review: Elbow - Dead In The Boot

A collection of B-sides and rarities is always an apprehensive sell. You take an artist or act who's garnered enough of a back catalogue and the fervent fanbase to warrant trawling through the cast-offs and alternate takes, but apart from completists the end result can be predominantly ignored, even derided.

But then again, not every act is Elbow, the Manchester-based band that started out offering stark, drunken, darkly beautiful indie ballads until they had coalesced into stadium fillers; men with immense hearts and an extremely charismatic (and laryngetically gifted) frontman in Guy Garvey. For those who only jumped on board when the boys won the Mercury Prize in 2008 for fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid, an album of uncharting, melancholic crawlers won't appeal. But for those who loved their frankly sublime 2001 debut Asleep In The Back this is a collection to savour. McGreggor foreshadows Grounds For Divorce with its clamour and howl providing an ecstatic highlight, whilst The Long War Shuffle offers an ominous shambolism. But mostly things shuffle along in the bluish light between dawn and sunrise; as the “ugly lights” come up over the bar and it's time to stagger home for wistful ruminations and a few fitful hours' sleep before the liquor hits the lips once more. Only Elbow could make such elegiac fare appear positively grandiose.

An album like Dead In The Boot may be a dying breed. This is a crying shame, because when a band can show other beautifully rendered sides to themselves away from the glare of the longplayer and singles, the true majesty of their character can shine.