Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
How do you ever follow up an internationally acclaimed album? The only way really is to come up with another one, just as good, just as sonically rampant, interestingly lush and throughout it all having five musicians chomping at the bit to make something stand out just as their debut album did 14 years ago.
Enter The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, a title that rings more towards the Progressive than others might suggest but listening to the album you cannot but be struck by the allusions to the questions of narrative riding through each song. The feeling that whilst the days of playing gigs in the local bar in Bury are a long way behind them, the chronicles laid out still want to take you back to that time, to show just exactly how far the trip has taken them. Progressive is for some, not an area in which they like to traverse. The murky world of 1970s Prog still looms in thoughts of those who like their music just to recount a single feeling, one emotion in one tidy song. However Progressive in the last 20 years doesn’t mean what it meant when the term was first coined. If by the songs, of which Fly Boy Blue, Lunette and New York Morning are excellently put together in the vein, can capture the complexity of emotions that each of us feel from second to second, if they can tell a narrative story with the sound of musicians keeping the tempo in line with those fluctuating passions and sensations then by its very nature it has to be progressive and for that The Take Off And Landing Of Everything is a delightful example of music as art in an enlightened and broad-minded way.
Like the previous recording by the band, the feel of Real World studios is stamped all over The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, the natural beauty of Peter Gabriel’s studios infusing the album with depth and subtly but also an overriding sense of responsibility towards the final finished product. The subtle changes that might not be picked up by the majority in the way that the band have progressed in the last couple of years, the change not just musically but in their emotions and way the music reacts and reflects, fluid like but with a sense of order, to their changing position in life and in the world.
Although nobody will ever take the place of Peter Gabriel, an impossible act to follow, the tutelage that comes across from one generational hero to another is there throughout the album. In sections the listener can hear echoes of songs such as the masterful Here Comes The Flood, the straining resonances of Mercy Street or the innate sensuality that arose during The Passion. Guy Garvey certainly couldn’t have had a better mentor or studio to work in recent years and tracks such as New York Morning, My Sad Captains, The Blanket of Night and This Blue World reflect this hefty nod to a great man and performer.
The Take Off And Landing Of Everything keeps the flow of albums made by Elbow in a well ordered manner, production is, as always superb and the slight changes in approach duly noted and enjoyed.
Ian D. Hall