Cast of Thousands
When you fire up this album and hear a couple of tracks, you might briefly fear that elbow have somehow dredged the very depths of their souls and found an even more depressing place than was signposted on their debut. If, like me, however, you realise that the CD player was just set to ‘random’, and had somehow found the 2 most depressing tracks on the album, a little hope might be found……... Elbow have found a sound a little like a person whose life has already been flushed down the sewers a couple of years ago, and this is the sound of the trials and tribulations of that life. It isn’t too depressing, and they don’t sound too pissed off about it, just a tad bored.
It’s actually a pleasantly experimental affair, with the wicked bad broken rhythms of Snooks (I confess to almost shitting myself at 1:13) and the wailing violins of ‘Fugitive Motel’ starring as typical landmarks of this dirty, unusual scenery. There are Radiohead-esque piano chords dotted throughout, ‘Crawling with Idiot’ occasionally sounds like an extra from Soundgarden’s down on the upside, and moments from the rest of the album also pick out the mood of Cornell’s previous namesake. But it’s an individual album – as tempting as it is to make comparisons between this and any other dismal Manchester bands, Damon Gough’s Bewilderbeast and Doves (who actually appear on this album) to name a few, in many ways it rises above their contemporaries, frequently and easily finding more elegant and awkward positions than the others could in the space of a single hour.
Some tracks sound like they’ve been written more for the background, some for the foreground – but this is not in comparison to the usual singles / album filler tracks – they’re all pretty good at what they do. Mainly. The experimental streak they’ve further developed since 2001’s Asleep in the Back has taken things in different ways though – and they aren’t always positive. One complaint is that Garvey could learn to shut up a little. As great as his image-laden lyrics are, and as fitting as most of his mournful melodies / harmonies can be, some tracks (namely the plodding ‘I’ve got your number’), would benefit heavily from being an instrumental – especially with the fact that Ben Hillier’s production, along with the catchy, twitchy parts, is good enough to let the song ride along on its own accord. But even the wunderkind Hillier is fallible, spied via a particularly mundane use of their local gospel choir. You might wonder if it’s intentionally frustrating…
Whilst A Cast of Thousands is a little chubby around the middle (‘Switching Off’ and ‘Buttons and Zips’ have the mood but not the substance), elsewhere its a lean, sinewy album which shows you why its not necessarily a bad thing that it always rains in Manchester.
8.1
MD 10:38 27/08/2003