Build a Rocket Boys!
Encyclopedia
Build a Rocket Boys! is the fifth studio album by the indie rock
/alternative rock
band Elbow
, released on 4 March 2011 in the UK. Coinciding with the UK release, the album was available digitally in the United States on 8 March and released in the physical format on 12 April. It is the follow-up to the highly successful The Seldom Seen Kid
, and like its predecessor, was self-produced by the band in Blueprint Studios, Manchester. The album was nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize
.
The first single, "Neat Little Rows", was released on 27 February 2011. The song received its first radio airplay on 13 January 2011. The video for the single was produced by The Soup Collective and filmed at Blueprint Studios where the album was recorded. It premiered on 31 January 2011.
on 22 December 2010. It is said to be influenced by lead singer Guy Garvey
's childhood, as he moved back to the area he grew up in before the album was recorded, and is aimed to appease both their traditional fanbase and those who took a shine to the arena anthems of The Seldom Seen Kid.
The band's success, according to Guy Garvey, made it difficult for the band to continue in the same vein when it came to lyrics. For, as Q magazine
put it, "...when heartbreaking melancholia is your currency, success and contentment can be a problem." The group's frontman admitted that due to being "too happy" he had to "look elsewhere for lyrics." "I can't sincerely write about where I'm at because I'm doing OK. It wouldn't work."
Elbow began writing new material and reviewing previous material they'd made on the road in January 2010, while on the Isle of Mull
. It was there and then that the new album's major motif began to take shape: that of nostalgia, missing family life and detesting the feeling of being unable to settle in. "In essence, they realised they've grown up, and the thought set Garvey on a nostalgic, reflective course," according to Q.
The agenda, both thematically and musically, was set by "Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl," a minimalist
, Eno
-esque track based on Garvey's earlier poem he wrote about his first love. "I think our records have always had light and shade to a degree, this one more so than the others", commented Garvey. A couple of times, when struggling with lyrics, he made trips to Peter Gabriel
's Real World Studios
in Wiltshire
to "share thoughts" with its owner. On such occasions the frontman communicated via video calls with his band, which, on some occasions, had to place the laptop on top of the piano and play the latest versions of songs to virtual Garvey.
"Lippy Kids", according to Q, is a key song: it was written in defence of the British teenager, victim to, as Garvey put it, "the anti-hoody shit that goes on in the media, the thought that if you hang around on a street corner you're a criminal." Speaking of the overall sound and its apparent lack of radio-friendliness, Garvey commented: "We could write deliberate radio hits until the cows come home, but I think you can hear it really obviously when a band has done that." The singer mentioned the relative easiness of the atmosphere in which the album was recorded. "It's the first album we've made without the comedy anvil hanging over our heads," he said.
In January Guy Garvey sent Q Magazine a 'new album update', mentioning among many things that happened since the magazine's correspondent last visit to the studio...
Indeed, Halle Youth Choir
(which once has played with the band in 2009) features on six of the tracks, most noticeably, "With Love" and "Open Arms."
scale. According to The Telegraph
's Helen Brown (who gave it 5 out of 5), Guy Garvey, very much in the vein of artist LS Lowry, "make(s) something moving and original from the experience of the man on the street", drawing "poignant, minimalist sketches of urban life that seem to be observed with a big yearning heart from a remote distance". The band followed the success of Seldom Seen Kid with "greatness and without fuss", providing "…more of the same: richly textured, intelligent and warm stuff", according to the critic.
NME
's John Doran, insisting that it's 'artistic bravery' that places Elbow "in a different league to other purveyors of emotional atmospheric rock", compares the album favourably to Coldplay
's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
, noting that the group is "rooted in the sublimely specific and the gloriously mundane" with Guy Garvey here cementing his position of "the laureate of the everyday." "If you've ever been chucked, realised that you miss your parents, or thought that you don't see enough of your mates, then he has written a song that hits the heart of the matter with frightening resonance", writes the reviewer. Not exactly impressed by the track "Lippy Kids" ("which sees him lamenting the shortness of childhood in a manner that threatens to become Hovis ad-esque"), the critic points to "Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl" as a "sublime counterpoint to this", calling it "a beautifully vivid recollection of moving in with someone for the first time." Elbow, according to NME, remain “a gently progressive and subtly innovative force." On the other hand, Alexis Petridis
of The Guardian
pinpoints "Lippy Kids" as "the album's emotional centre", calling it "a gorgeous meditation on adolescence that recognises both the gauche awfulness of it all [...] and the fact that you may never feel quite as rawly alive again."
Johnny Davis of Q Magazine argues that this is an album "that maximizes the use of light and shade"; this is what makes it different from The Seldom Seen Kid which was full of "autumnal melancholy." According to Ian Cohen of Pitchfork Media, Elbow, who are more than ever "hitching their fortunes to their lead singer" have recorded "by a large margin their quietest record to date, the closest thing to a Garvey solo album we've heard."
Additional musicians
Production
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...
/alternative rock
Alternative rock
Alternative rock is a genre of rock music and a term used to describe a diverse musical movement that emerged from the independent music underground of the 1980s and became widely popular by the 1990s...
band Elbow
Elbow (band)
Elbow are an English rock band. They have played together since 1990 and recorded five studio albums, the most recent of which is Build a Rocket Boys!, released in March 2011...
, released on 4 March 2011 in the UK. Coinciding with the UK release, the album was available digitally in the United States on 8 March and released in the physical format on 12 April. It is the follow-up to the highly successful The Seldom Seen Kid
The Seldom Seen Kid
The Seldom Seen Kid is the fourth studio album by the progressive rock/alternative rock band Elbow. It was released by Fiction Records on 17 March 2008 in the United Kingdom and was released by Geffen Records on 22 April 2008 in the United States...
, and like its predecessor, was self-produced by the band in Blueprint Studios, Manchester. The album was nominated for the 2011 Mercury Prize
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize and currently known as the Barclaycard Mercury Prize for sponsorship reasons, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album from the United Kingdom and Ireland. It was established by the British Phonographic Industry and British...
.
The first single, "Neat Little Rows", was released on 27 February 2011. The song received its first radio airplay on 13 January 2011. The video for the single was produced by The Soup Collective and filmed at Blueprint Studios where the album was recorded. It premiered on 31 January 2011.
History
The album's title, tracklisting and cover art were "accidentally" revealed by frontman Guy GarveyGuy Garvey
Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey , is the singer/guitarist in the band Elbow, as well as a presenter for BBC 6 Music and A&R manager of Skinny Dog Records...
on 22 December 2010. It is said to be influenced by lead singer Guy Garvey
Guy Garvey
Guy Edward John Patrick Garvey , is the singer/guitarist in the band Elbow, as well as a presenter for BBC 6 Music and A&R manager of Skinny Dog Records...
's childhood, as he moved back to the area he grew up in before the album was recorded, and is aimed to appease both their traditional fanbase and those who took a shine to the arena anthems of The Seldom Seen Kid.
The band's success, according to Guy Garvey, made it difficult for the band to continue in the same vein when it came to lyrics. For, as Q magazine
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...
put it, "...when heartbreaking melancholia is your currency, success and contentment can be a problem." The group's frontman admitted that due to being "too happy" he had to "look elsewhere for lyrics." "I can't sincerely write about where I'm at because I'm doing OK. It wouldn't work."
Elbow began writing new material and reviewing previous material they'd made on the road in January 2010, while on the Isle of Mull
Isle of Mull
The Isle of Mull or simply Mull is the second largest island of the Inner Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland in the council area of Argyll and Bute....
. It was there and then that the new album's major motif began to take shape: that of nostalgia, missing family life and detesting the feeling of being unable to settle in. "In essence, they realised they've grown up, and the thought set Garvey on a nostalgic, reflective course," according to Q.
The agenda, both thematically and musically, was set by "Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl," a minimalist
Minimalism
Minimalism describes movements in various forms of art and design, especially visual art and music, where the work is set out to expose the essence, essentials or identity of a subject through eliminating all non-essential forms, features or concepts...
, Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
-esque track based on Garvey's earlier poem he wrote about his first love. "I think our records have always had light and shade to a degree, this one more so than the others", commented Garvey. A couple of times, when struggling with lyrics, he made trips to Peter Gabriel
Peter Gabriel
Peter Brian Gabriel is an English singer, musician, and songwriter who rose to fame as the lead vocalist and flautist of the progressive rock group Genesis. After leaving Genesis, Gabriel went on to a successful solo career...
's Real World Studios
Real World Studios
Real World Studios is a residential recording studio in Box, Wiltshire, England associated with the Real World Records Ltd. record label founded by rock musician Peter Gabriel...
in Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
to "share thoughts" with its owner. On such occasions the frontman communicated via video calls with his band, which, on some occasions, had to place the laptop on top of the piano and play the latest versions of songs to virtual Garvey.
"Lippy Kids", according to Q, is a key song: it was written in defence of the British teenager, victim to, as Garvey put it, "the anti-hoody shit that goes on in the media, the thought that if you hang around on a street corner you're a criminal." Speaking of the overall sound and its apparent lack of radio-friendliness, Garvey commented: "We could write deliberate radio hits until the cows come home, but I think you can hear it really obviously when a band has done that." The singer mentioned the relative easiness of the atmosphere in which the album was recorded. "It's the first album we've made without the comedy anvil hanging over our heads," he said.
In January Guy Garvey sent Q Magazine a 'new album update', mentioning among many things that happened since the magazine's correspondent last visit to the studio...
Indeed, Halle Youth Choir
The Hallé
The Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
(which once has played with the band in 2009) features on six of the tracks, most noticeably, "With Love" and "Open Arms."
Reception
Critics praised the album as arguably one of the best in Elbow's career and it garnered an impressive 83/100 rating on MetacriticMetacritic
Metacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
scale. According to The Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
's Helen Brown (who gave it 5 out of 5), Guy Garvey, very much in the vein of artist LS Lowry, "make(s) something moving and original from the experience of the man on the street", drawing "poignant, minimalist sketches of urban life that seem to be observed with a big yearning heart from a remote distance". The band followed the success of Seldom Seen Kid with "greatness and without fuss", providing "…more of the same: richly textured, intelligent and warm stuff", according to the critic.
NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
's John Doran, insisting that it's 'artistic bravery' that places Elbow "in a different league to other purveyors of emotional atmospheric rock", compares the album favourably to Coldplay
Coldplay
Coldplay are a British alternative rock band formed in 1996 by lead vocalist Chris Martin and lead guitarist Jonny Buckland at University College London. After they formed Pectoralz, Guy Berryman joined the group as a bassist and they changed their name to Starfish. Will Champion joined as a...
's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends
Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, often referred to as simply Viva la Vida is the fourth studio album by British rock band Coldplay, released on 11 June 2008 on Parlophone. The album was named after a Spanish phrase that translates in English as "long live life"...
, noting that the group is "rooted in the sublimely specific and the gloriously mundane" with Guy Garvey here cementing his position of "the laureate of the everyday." "If you've ever been chucked, realised that you miss your parents, or thought that you don't see enough of your mates, then he has written a song that hits the heart of the matter with frightening resonance", writes the reviewer. Not exactly impressed by the track "Lippy Kids" ("which sees him lamenting the shortness of childhood in a manner that threatens to become Hovis ad-esque"), the critic points to "Jesus Is a Rochdale Girl" as a "sublime counterpoint to this", calling it "a beautifully vivid recollection of moving in with someone for the first time." Elbow, according to NME, remain “a gently progressive and subtly innovative force." On the other hand, Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis
Alexis Petridis is a British journalist, head rock and pop critic for UK newspaper The Guardian, as well as a regular and contributor to the magazine GQ.Petridis began his career writing for Varsity whilst a student at the University of Cambridge...
of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
pinpoints "Lippy Kids" as "the album's emotional centre", calling it "a gorgeous meditation on adolescence that recognises both the gauche awfulness of it all [...] and the fact that you may never feel quite as rawly alive again."
Johnny Davis of Q Magazine argues that this is an album "that maximizes the use of light and shade"; this is what makes it different from The Seldom Seen Kid which was full of "autumnal melancholy." According to Ian Cohen of Pitchfork Media, Elbow, who are more than ever "hitching their fortunes to their lead singer" have recorded "by a large margin their quietest record to date, the closest thing to a Garvey solo album we've heard."
Commercial performance
The album debuted at number 2 on the UK album chart with first week sales of 78,177 units. As of September 2011, the album had sold in excess of 300,000 units in the UK.Track listing
All lyrics written by Guy Garvey; all music composed by Elbow.Personnel
Elbow- Guy GarveyGuy GarveyGuy Edward John Patrick Garvey , is the singer/guitarist in the band Elbow, as well as a presenter for BBC 6 Music and A&R manager of Skinny Dog Records...
– vocals, string, brass & choral arrangements - Mark Potter – guitars
- Craig Potter – keyboards
- Pete Turner – bass
- Richard Jupp – drums
Additional musicians
- John Moseley – lead vocal (track 10)
- The Hallé Youth ChoirThe HalléThe Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
- additional vocals (tracks 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 & 11) - Margit Van Der Zwan - cello (tracks 1, 7 & 9)
- Adrianne Wininsky - cello (tracks 1 & 9)
- Stella Page - violin & viola (track 7)
- Bob Marsh - trumpet & flugelhorn (track 7 & 11)
Production
- Craig Potter – production, mixing
- Danny Evans – additional engineering (tracks 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 & 11)
- Tim Young – mastering
- Gregory Batsleer - youth choir director
- Joe Duddell - assistant
- Oliver East – illustrations
- Paul West – layout & design
Further reading
Guy Garvey told The Daily Mirror newspapers that the band has already started working on new material for a follow up to their current effort Build a Rocket Boys!. The band is now using a different recording technique. Richard Jupp had laid down a few patterns to start the writing process. “Rich went into the studio and recorded several different drum patterns for me,” he said. “I’ll go away next week and try and write lyrics for them. We’ve never worked this way before, but we’ll see what happens.”Beer
In July 2011, Elbow and Robinson's Brewery announced the release of a cask-ale named after the album. Formally unveiled at the Manchester Food & Drink Festival on October 13th 2011, the beer is available in cask or case of 8 bottles, and is currently being served at various Robinson's pubs (it is also available from the brewery).Release history
| Region | Date | Format | Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland | 4 March 2011 | Digital Download | Polydor |
| United Kingdom |