Elbow 'Asleep In The Back Deluxe Edition' (Polydor) Released 02/11/09

No-one could accuse Elbow of not having worked for the success they currently enjoy. For a start, it took them 11 years of hard slog just to reach the point of getting their first album out, something some bands nowadays seem to achieve after about six months and a couple of live gigs. Then, despite a Mercury Music Prize nomination and critical acclaim for their first two long-players, lack of units shifted saw them dropped by their record company following album number three. Only after a new label deal and 17 years of existence did 2007’s The Seldom Seen Kid finally see them hit pay dirt, the critical success of winning the Mercury Music Prize echoed by the number of albums flying off the shelves.

The band now firmly ensconced among rock’s respected elite, it’s time to peer backwards through the mist at their earlier output, starting with this re-issue of their first album, 2001’s Asleep In The Back. No doubt aimed at those who bought and enjoyed The Seldom Seen Kid after the Mercury publicity but never looked any further, what strikes about Asleep…, especially retrospectively, is how fully-formed the Elbow sound already was on their debut.

From the deliberate drums, sparse bass and rolling vocals of opener ‘Any Day Now’, the statement of intent is for room-filling, luxuriously produced music to gaze out the window to. ‘Red’, ‘Powder Blue’ and ‘Newborn’, the trio of singles that came from the album at the time, are as grand as anything on Seldom…, mega-anthem ‘One Day Like This’ excepted, while the gentle, understated longing of the title track gives soulful pause at the halfway point of the record. The likes of ‘Bitten By The Tailfly’ and ‘Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)’, meanwhile, provide a downbeat, darker contrast which prevents the more shimmery tracks from becoming overwhelming, leaving room for a twinkling, spiritually uplifting finale on closing track ‘Scattered Black and Whites’.

Those coming at this album from the direction of The Seldom Seen Kid will probably wonder how on earth Elbow missed out on the Mercury Prize first time round; a glance at that year’s competition (Radiohead, Super Furry Animals and eventual winner PJ Harvey among them) probably shows it was only fortune and circumstance that postponed their breakthrough to the mainstream.

This deluxe edition re-release comes complete with a six track live set recorded at London’s Astoria, the four track Noisebox EP which marked the band’s first release, and three tracks recorded live for Steve Lamacq, the latter including a stripped down version of ‘Newborn’ which might be enough to tempt completists to add this to their collection.