Elbow - Dead in the Boot Review

When a band releases its "Best Of B-Sides" record, that's usually an ominous cue that they might be running out of ideas. And yes, I know that on the last tour, Elbow did like a 5-song ballad break in the middle of every set while the band sat around a table and drank whiskey in celebration of their 20th anniversary together as Guy Garvey serenaded them. There's just one problem with the stereotype: this is actually a terrific album that might be better than one or two of their studio albums. Obviously, it being a B-side collection, there's no lead single here, but so what? There wasn't one on their last record either. Instead you get 13 moody meditations on everything from the price of phone sex to the War On Terror.

The reason this record is so good is because Elbow cranks out two or three of these murky, whiskey-and-cigarette infused distorted discontented grumbling drifters for every one of their stadium stompers, and so a ton of gems get left on the cutting room floor for every session. To wit, with their most recent album Build A Rocket Boys!, the lovely little tune Buffalo Ghosts got B-sided while the mail-it-in With Love went on the record. Problem solved: Buffalo Ghosts is here. And don't get me started on the gorgeous EP-that-never-happened that the Leaders Of The Free World sessions produced. Suffice to say that that album's title track, a political stomper that the band still plays at shows, wasn't even the best War On Terror song. That's here, it's called The Long War Shuffle, it'll never get 10,000 people clapping in unison, but it's terrific and even now is more politically salient than 90% of the contents of Newsweek Magazine.

For American fans of this band, their B-sides have been almost impossible to get up to now by any legal means. Hard core fans know that some of the best numbers still didn't make the cut (can we now get a Dead In The Boot B-Sides with Vum Garda, Brave New Shave, The Crow, Wurzel, the acoustic About Time, Puckfair, Suffer, Stumble, Live On My Mind, The Drunken Engineer, Strangeways, Hotel Istanbul, Kisses, the August And September cover and about four others please?) but this is an overdue remedy.

80/100

See Also 
Flaming Lips