Last Updated on June 27, 2024
Lend your ears to U.K. prog-rockers elbow‘s tenth studio album AUDIO VERTIGO to find yourself transported to an oasis of beguiling grooves and witty reckonings. Guided by lead singer and lyricist Guy Garvey, the band crafts an engrossing diversion to life’s many despairs, steering you toward balmy aural bliss.
It begins with “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years,” a slide into the slipstream of a gaudy ego that doubles as a tongue-in-cheek self-flagellation. “I’m the dashboard hula girl of nodding self-deception / Here’s to never accepting slight adjustment or correction,” Garvey drawls to the cooing encouragement of backing vocals and groaning guitars. “Here’s to a doting mother’s voice / Assisting me in every choice.” The absurdity of his haughty metaphors is matched only by the din of truth ringing in the aftertaste of its heady irony and rivetingly gruff melody.
Throughout the record, elbow tempers dark moments of heartache with Garvey’s irreverently poignant images and an overdose of rapt grooves. There’s the nosedive of doomed lovebirds that unfolds amidst the brassy funk of “Lovers’ Leap,” a cosmic burst of glassy synths and flurried horns that spill robustly from “Balu,” or the lulling delirium within “Very Heaven” that soaks the mind with throbbing drums and Garvey’s sprawling phantasmagoria.
On “Her to the Earth” they find themselves caught between the daunting realities of the age and painful indignation, all while holding tightly to the love that still offers shelter: “We live in a troubling age / But the world has given me arms for you.” Yet tight grips lead to quick slips as “The Picture” reveals, the track injecting a frantic punchiness into elbow’s melodic corkscrewing. “But there is a picture / Lost in the ether / Chewed to corruption / By the binary oceans,” Garvey wails. “Of you and I kissing, fizzing and hoping.”
Even the most harrowing explorations of lover’s trysts manage to enchant. “Knife Fight” — a dreamy memory of a bloody scrap on a moonlit Istanbul street that ends in a comical resolution — wrestles with the sad reflection it inspires of their own volatile relationship. “Is it ’cause we / Communicate disastrously? / I want you, I love you, I need you / What’s that supposed to mean?”
The penultimate finale for the album, “Good Blood Mexico City,” unleashes a jaunt of celebratory ecstasy. Beginning with a smokey Latin riff the song eventually careens into an anthemic swell of scintillating guitars and propulsive energy that rouses you into one final hurrah. As the record winds to a close, “From the River” effuses benevolent wisdom and earnestly swaying rhythms to impart a carefully guarded hope.
Whether it’s the abundance of irresistibly rubbery melodies that spring within or simply the sardonic charm of Garvey at its head — AUDIO VERTIGO leaves you reeling for more. A delightful distraction and colossal exercise in lyrical levity that never fails to leave you hopelessly giddy for the mesmeric color in saturates you with.
BEST CONCERTS IN LOS ANGELES THIS MONTH
Words: Steven Ward
AUDIO VERTIGO is available now on all streaming platforms.
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Listen to AUDIO VERTIGO the new album from elbow below!
elbow
AUDIO VERTIGO
Polydor/GEFFEN Records
March 22, 2024
01 Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years
02 Lovers’ Leap
03 (Where Is It?)
04 Balu
05 Very Heaven
06 Her to the Earth
07 The Picture
08 Poker Face
09 Knife Fight
10 Embers of Day
11 Good Blood Mexico City
12 From the River
