Build A Rocket Boys

Singer Guy Garvey's elevation to cover-boy status is not the only improbable aspect of Elbow's late-blooming success. You could argue that in the current climate, late-blooming success itself is pretty improbable: regularly appended to Elbow's name, the phrase "the people's band" – with its weird implication that every other double-platinum artist has a fanbase largely comprised of budgerigars or golden retrievers – tells you more about journalists struggling to come to terms with the baffling concept of a band that's got big after four albums, rather than arriving in a blaze of glory, then vanishing after 18 months. More specifically, Elbow belong in the pantheon of artists who have got big as a result of one rather atypical song. That song has certain Elbow traits, being tender and suffused with melancholy: in the teeth of its adoption as a wedding anthem and default finale to the kind of ghastly TV programme in which people announce they're on "a journey", it's worth remembering "One Day Like This" concerns a protagonist wistfully imagining how incredible it would be to have it off once a year. But those not familiar with their earlier oeuvre should note that before the deluge, Elbow's most high-profile fan was probably John Cale, not a man you imagine spends a lot of time punching the air to uplifting stadium rock.

Too old to have their heads turned by mainstream success, but too big-hearted, maybe too grateful, to spurn it with a churlish how-do-you-like-us-now gesture, Build a Rocket Boys! sees Elbow doing perhaps the smartest thing you could under the circumstances: carrying on regardless. You could argue that "Neat Little Rows" represents an amalgam of the best-known moments of its predecessor, The Seldom Seen Kid – the chorus soars towards the arena's upper tiers, the guitars crunch as on "Grounds for Divorce" – and that "Open Arms" clearly has its heart set on stirring vast crowds. But it goes about it via a pleasingly serpentine route, with a lyric about