Elbow: The Seldom Seen Kid

Pegging Elbow's sound is tricky, and not just

because its members once unhelpfully referred to themselves as "prog without

the solos." Image-wise, they seemingly strive to be as nondescript as possible.

They're "anthemic," but nothing like U2 or Doves. They're gloomy, lyrically

self-loathing Brits, but not nearly eccentric enough to be Radiohead. They're

genre-compression machines — their fourth studio album takes unexpected

cues from tango—but they'll never have the flamboyance of David Bowie or

Beck. Elbow is just a band of smart, dedicated musicians whose expansive songs

work through lush instrumentation and diffuse structures to build ballads

without hooks, midway between Tindersticks' gloom and Guillemots' flamboyance.

Quintessential repeat-listen music, The Seldom Seen Kid's instantly perceivable

sonic frills give way to solid but not stolid songs: Tango or Led Zeppelin, it

all gets folded into an instrumental density few bands can match, in the studio

or otherwise. As ever with Elbow, the album is too long, ever ready to make

room for more lush melancholy. But beneath the superficial drabness and gloom

is a band as diverse as any of its flashier contemporaries