New York Morning (Single) - Elbow

I, like many others, discovered Elbow in 2008 around the time of their breakout success The Seldom Seen Kid. I can claim a faint glimmer of elitism when I say that I got my copy of the album several months before it brought monumental success to the group, but such a claim doesn’t really mean all that much. I was just excited to have discovered such a solid and accomplished band, and more than that a group who seem like genuinely nice guys behind the scenes and in interviews. I was therefore very pleased for them when they won the Mercury Prize and began receiving much wider recognition – being called one of the UK’s best bands. It was an accolade that they had worked towards, and one that they accepted with an all too rare sense of humility. Here is a band who are ‘in it’ for the right reasons.

The huge success of The Seldom Seen Kid didn’t affect the quality of their output, and any fears that this would have been the case were laid to rest with the release of Build A Rocket Boys! in 2011. The album was a worthy successor to The Seldom Seen Kid, with a mature yet accessible sound – and Guy Garvey’s beautiful poetic lyrics and sincere vocals grounding the ambitious and varied arrangements. There is a real sense of the everyman about Guy Garvey, which for me is something I find so appealing about Elbow as a band. He always comes across as very genuine and very real in interviews, as opposed to being pretentious or repellent.

This year Elbow are set to release their sixth album: The Take Off And Landing Of Everything which is preceded by the single ‘New York Morning’. The song describes the feeling of the famous city waking up and coming to life, whilst the narrator sits in a café and watches it all go by. The joys of people watching in “modern Rome”. Although the band have found success within America they have not forgotten their roots, punctuated early on through the use of the quintessentially British phrase “oh my giddy aunt”.

The track starts with a gentle fade-in – much like the sun slowly rising over the city – but very quickly builds up a head of steam as industrial drums and deliberate punctuated piano chords create the sense of great buildings and skyscrapers all around. Meanwhile the lyrics are very much a stream-of-consciousness-style outpouring, as the poet surveys all that he sees and shares the thoughts and feelings that are evoked by all of this.

It is a very uplifting track, one that ponders upon the possibilities that come with the start of every new day: “Oh my God, New York can talk/And somewhere in that talk is all the answers”. It is very well crafted, conjuring up the image of a New York Morning very fittingly. It also has me feeling optimistic about the new album, as if there were ever any doubts!