Leaders Of The Free World - Elbow

Hopefully, with the success of The Seldom Seen Kid, people will return to this album and it will get the recognition it deserves. It is easily as good as, if not better than The Seldom Seen Kid. A lot of critics have treated Elbow as a less interesting version of Coldplay or Keene. I would argue that they are far more interesting, trying to avoid cliched ways of expressing emotion and the songs having much better lyrical content The arrangements are simple and grandoise at the same time - preceding album, Cast of Thousands, had a very stripped down sound, with the odd choir or glastonbury crowd singing along. This album builds on that. Only adding ...  Read the complete review

The last few years have seen the British music scene become increasingly more vibrant. There have been a large number of new bands appeared since the start of 2003 and there were a few that returned during that year as well. Elbow were one of those bands and at the time 2003's Cast Of Thousands was certainly the bands best album to date. That is however until a few weeks ago when the band returned to release their 3rd studio album, Leaders Of The Freeworld. The album title alone showed that the album was influenced heavily by political events around the time they were writing it, such as Live 8. Instead of getting a producer in to help them with the album, ...  Read the complete review