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The Seldom Seen Kid | 
 enlarge | Artist: Elbow
Label: Polydor Group
Category: Music
List Price: £16.99
Buy New: £6.93
You Save: £10.06 (59%)
New (25) Used (6) from £5.25
Rating:  75 reviews
Sales Rank: 17
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 1
Running Time: 56 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 5 x 0.5
UPC: 602517640986
EAN: 0602517640986
ASIN: B0013F2M52
Release Date: March 17, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Tracks:
| • | Starlings | | • | The Bones Of You | | • | Mirrorball | | • | Grounds For Divorce | | • | An Audience With The Pope | | • | Weather To Fly | | • | The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver | | • | The Fix - Elbow, Richard Hawley | | • | Some Riot | | • | One Day Like This | | • | Friend Of Ours | | • | We're Away |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
There are few things in life quite so liberating as the opening track on an Elbow album--they're like airlocks between the plainness of the outside world and the elaborate melancholic heave-ho that you are likely about to submerge yourself in. Following predecessors "Any Day Now", "Ribcage" and "Station Approach", "Starlings" opens their fourth album The Seldom Seen Kid rising from a bed of tumbling electronic subtlety like a depressed Atari game loading up, adding bare touches of piano, glimpses of ambient guitar, out of body background vocals, an understated pulse and a wisp of strings, before--EXCELSIS!--a fanfare avalanche of horns crashes the gate and elevates things to gasping palatial heights, before Guy Garvey's inimitable gravel tone and wrenchingly poetic reinterpretations of the everyday announce their arrival proper. It's astonishing, by far the most progressive moment on the album and if anything it sets the bar too high. But even when the pace dips, and songs like "Mirrorball" and "Weather to Fly" don't distinguish themselves quite enough, their textural peerlessness remains. This is a beautiful sounding record. Their collaboration with Richard Hawley may be more of a curiosity than a thing of beauty, but the highs, the riffing cross-stitch of "Ground for Divorce", the desolate grandeur of "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver" and the enlightened string-laden anthem "On a Day Like This" (like their own Sound of Music--only substitute the Alpine peaks for a Manchester high-rise) number amongst the best of their career. --James Berry
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| Customer Reviews: Read 70 more reviews...
 This Is Beautiful. August 9, 2008
W. Joo (USA)
4.5 stars actually. 5 if slightly more ambitious. For example, the long ending of One Day Like This sounds too formulaic. (Like Paul McCartney?)But anyway, it's the most beautiful album in a few years, which makes me to write the first album review in a few years.
It is a great wonder how something that reminds me of Coldplay can still sound distinguished from Coldplay. Does this mean Coldplay could have been a much better band than now??
 Album of the summer? Year more like! August 2, 2008
The usual suspect
Some people are claiming this to be the album of the summer but having listened to them and bought it. They're are wrong! It's more like the album of the year! There are some big titles to come out later on in the year though so maybe I'll eat my words...
SSK is an instantly likeable album - no 'you'll come to like it' going on here. No weak tunes in the 13 strong tracklist and at last we have an album this year that isn't short.
It's my first Elbow album and I'll be sure to check out their previous work now.
Best Yet July 25, 2008
Mr. R. D. Morrison (Chester, UK)
Perhaps the first Elbow album that starts to transend groups of music lovers?. People have often wondered why Guy Garvey et al have not become as widely acclaimed as some their peers - this album may start to answer some of those questions. Every other Elbow album has been a grower and sometimes are such a treat that you cannot listen all in one go - an acquired taste perhaps...... SSK combines a string of songs that I defy anyone with the faintest of music taste not to appreaciate (I forgive and do not care about that ever growing band that seem to worship that American R&B vs Gansta Rap vs Diva (Rhiannon / Mariah) trash that is flooding our market at the moment). Whilst I am not going into specific songs Elbow have finally released an album that will be loved by so called 'mainstream' fans of Coldplay (they/we are not a bad bunch by the way) to us more obscure group of traditional Elbow fans. To sum up - the best album of the noughties (yes - that good) and their most most 'mainstream' album to date - that is not a bad thing as it may finally bring this great, great band the recognition they deserve.....
Want to try something new? July 25, 2008
Cookie Dough
If you are looking to 'branch out' and try something new then give this a go - I cannot recommended it enough.
I'd heard of Elbow but never bought any albums until now (foolish I know!) - this is just simply stunning. Before you know it, you won't actually want to stop playing it - it is a very thoughtful, hypnotic yet calming album.
Try it - you will not be dissappointed.
Short-listed July 23, 2008
Bz (Lymm, Cheshire United Kingdom)
What can I say that's new ? I agree with the majority of the reviews here ... this is a superb album. Play it several times and you'll find that there are no 'throw-away' tracks - each and every one of them is good enough to be an A side ( terminology from my early years )had we still been in the EP era.
Today, it's been announced that it has been short-listed for the Mercury with the panel "heaping praise on Elbow for having produced 'an epic rock album' with their 4th album".
I guess crowd members at Glastonbury, who Guy encouraged to assist 'throw those curtains wide'( yea, the 'Ikea song'! ), would agree with 'epic'
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