The Take-Off and Landing of Everything Elbow Artist

{|Elbow|} recorded their sixth album at Real World Studios, making the connection between themselves and {|Peter Gabriel|} plain. Much of this connection comes from the husky, subdued rasp of lead singer {|Guy Garvey|}, but the band on a whole favors... Read more

{|Elbow|} recorded their sixth album at Real World Studios, making the connection between themselves and {|Peter Gabriel|} plain. Much of this connection comes from the husky, subdued rasp of lead singer {|Guy Garvey|}, but the band on a whole favors a similar kind of accessible art rock where the textures are lucid yet elliptical while the songs are sturdy and melodic, wearing their accouterments well. This blend helped make 2011's {|Build a Rocket Boys!|} into a sizable hit in their native Britain and throughout Europe, but {|The Take Off and Landing of Everything|} is better still, demonstrating that the band knows how to seize the spoils of success. This assurance -- relaxed and deliberate, confident enough to play up both melodies and cool, echoing abstractions in the production -- belies how much of the album was written in the wake of the dissolution of {|Garvey|}'s long-term romantic relationship, but {|The Take Off|} isn't strictly a breakup album. Rather, it's a record of coming to term with middle age, finding that there is a birth that accompanies every death, joy to balance the sorrow, an understanding that comes with acceptance. {|Garvey|} conveys these issues in his lyrics but, as a band, {|Elbow|} reflect this comfortable reckoning with their own nature, letting sadness creep at the edges but favoring a warm, enveloping melancholy that turns the album into a soundtrack for healing, not wallowing. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine Less