Elbow
Asleep in the Back
Label:  V2 
Date:  5/7/2001
Length:  0:00
Format:  CD
Genre:  Rock; Alternative
  Category:  rock
    Track Listing:
      1.  
      		 Any Day Now    
      2.  
      		 Red    
      3.  
      		 Little Beast    
      4.  
      		 Powder Blue    
      5.  
      		 Bitten by the Tailfly    
      6.  
      		 Asleep in the Back    
      7.  
      		 Newborn    
      8.  
      		 Don't Mix Your Drinks    
      9.  
      		 Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)    
      10.  
      		 Coming Second    
      11.  
      		 Can't Stop    
      12.  
      		 Scattered Black and Whites    
    Additional info: | top

      While it's tempting to position Elbow next to the sardonic likes of Badly Drawn Boy--mainly because of their proximity to the city of Manchester and their way with an acoustic guitar--Asleep In The Back, their frighteningly competent debut album, bears not the joker's smile. Instead, it comes straight from Manchester's simmering, ugly dark side--eleven tracks of rain-sodden misery, blown up into the breed of gracefully elegiac fatalism that once formed the essence of the likes of Joy Division. The foggy psychedelic swirl and sewer-deep dub basslines might recall the prog-rock indulgences of Radiohead, but Elbow's grievances are unmistakably aired from the far end of a dole queue; "Any Day Now" veritably fidgets with small town frustration, lead singer Guy Garvey--a man with the voice of an angel and the face of a brickie--hissing "Any day now/ How's about getting out of this place/ Anyways?" over and over, a mantra of desperation. Should we take it as a given that Elbow will break out of this rut of depression and despair? Asleep In The Back is good enough to suggest so. But then, Asleep In The Back also knows that fate can be awfully cruel. --Louis Pattison