Review Summary: No real buzz here.
The last time English alt rockers Elbow found it necessary to release an EP, they had just been dropped by their label. Fortunately, the five-piece were quickly picked up by local independent label Ugly Man Records, with whom they soon released the excellent
Noisebox,
Newborn, and
Any Day Now EPs. The rest, as they say, is history: Elbow’s fourth studio album,
The Seldom Seen Kid, beat out Radiohead’s
In Rainbows and Burial’s
Untrue to claim the 2008 Mercury Prize, while their most recent record, 2014’s
The Take Off and Landing of Everything, debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart.
It's hard to imagine, given past difficulties in building up their brand, that Elbow would risk ruining their legacy with a completely unessential extended play. Yet the
Lost Worker Bee is just that. The mini-album opens with the expansive, single-worthy title track, which sees Garvey trading in the commercial flight metaphors of his last full-length release to dwell instead on the experience of living as a lovelorn industrial drone. “Out in the world, I know there’s somewhere a heart-drinking girl/Kindness in reservoirs, scours the underground searching for me," sings Garvey, clearly aiming to script the biography of the entire blue-collared world. "And It Snowed" in turn is propelled along by little more than Pete Turner’s slightly muffled bass and an insistent piano riff. While the song itself is fairly serviceable, it is likely to end up as additional fodder for those who complain that Elbow don’t show nearly enough sonic innovation for an artist of their reputation and experience. The sole comfort to be found on “And It Snowed” is, unsurprisingly, the presence of Guy Garvey, whose delicate style of narration manages to reinforce the theme of winter ennui that runs down the song’s solar plexus.
Then there's “Roll Call”, which is better - but not by much. Here, the band elect to combine an undercurrent of splintered guitar play with a rollicking mid-section where Richard Jupp’s drums sound for all the world like an incoming avalanche. The result is a piece that is ostensibly slow-mo in essence, but with an odd sense of speed in the background. Spiritually, the song is similar to “Always Forever Now”, an obscure U2/Brian Eno collaboration that saw some circulation in the mid-90s. “Usually Bright”, which closes the EP, is a typical Elbow-style ode to having loved and lost. As is the case for the bulk of the band’s compositions, the number derives much of its grandeur from its startling clarity and attention to detail: “Hotel in my hometown, the saddest room I ever woke in,” sighs Garvey, before reaching for his collection of gins and tonics. This probably would have been a fairly interesting tale to listen to, had we not been shown this template several times over already.
On balance,
Lost Worker Bee simply does not do enough to distinguish itself from the rest of Elbow’s oeuvre, and therein lies its greatest failing. It’s one thing to peddle acceptable, even solid wares to prospective listeners, but when new releases are made simply because they can, as opposed to when there are new developments to be shared or important things to be said, that is usually the first sign that a band is getting a bit too comfortable for their own good. Don’t be afraid to give this one a miss.
