Music Review: Elbow, Little Fictions

It can be difficult to fully appreciate Elbow without the benefit of repeated listening (and especially without the benefit of seeing them live).

But appreciate this music you should.

Little Fictions is the seventh studio album from the English indie rockers, the follow-up to the similarly slow-burning Build A Rocket Boys (2011) and The Take Off and Landing of Everything (2014).

Their music is subtle, nuanced, and reveals something new every time you listen.

Opener and lead single Magnificent (She Says) employs the band's familiar string backing, and adds to their strong collection of expansive, epic singalongs.

Guy Garvey's lyrics as ever paint a vivid, cinematic picture: "There on the sand, throwing both her arms around the world, the world that doesn't even know how much it needs this little girl."

Or on the title track, this marvellous description of domestic unrest: "The flurry of departure in a cyclone of cologne, would often devastate the gate and hedge, and set our tiny teeth on edge."

If there's a weakpoint at all on this album, it's probably the closer, Kindling, with its shades of U2's Running To Stand Still, a track Elbow have covered. But even then it's not a terrible song.

And as with the rest of the album, it may well elicit an emotional response from the listener.

Little Fictions is magnificent (I say).

Rating 4/5 stars