‘Not a Job’- Elbow, 2003
Elbow are receiving some long overdue credit this year due to the winning of the Mercury Prize winning album The Seldom Seen Kid released earlier this year. Their music deserves to be up there with the best indie band in the UK like Radiohead and Gomez. What’s most appealing about them is their ability to draw the listener into their world and make you listen to the album repeatedly as the couple of albums I’ve listened were real slow-burners and you only begin to appreciate the album once drawn in. The downside of course is that people may not want to be drawn in and leave the album on the shelve collecting dust but if you do persevere then more often than not it will be worth it. They deserve to be mentioned alongside Gomez and Radiohead for this alone.
The song Not a Job is the third single from the album Cast of Thousands – a stark, layered album dealing with real issues affecting almost everybody – love, drinking, etc although the lyrics often seem, to me at least, to be complex and indecipherable but this song is probably one the most accessible songs on the album (along with Buttons and Zips) in terms of reaching a general audience with it’s beautiful, soft melody. For the most part I think I do get this song as its a breakup song but he’s still hurting and coming to rash decisions which everybody that experiences this comes too. The cold light of day often brings a different perspective.
Words to make her stay: you said
Leave me and the plants die
A panic smile across your face
Corrugated browline
The hissing bitter punchline
Call when you can tie your lace
From this verse he is still bitter over the breakup and the emotions are still raw as ‘when you can tie your lace’ seems full of contempt for the ex although he does seem to admit this, in a roundabout way from the line above ‘the hissing bitter punchline’. While I did state that their lyrics can be complex and indecipherable, it is still their strongest weapon when you do understand them in someway. An example of complex lyrics in this song are:
‘The dream again nobody understands
Walking through the long grass on your hands
It’s not a job to do today
Sleep it off’
Sometimes I think he’s just saying that nobody understands his feelings better than himself and to explain them is like ‘Walking through grass on your hands’ which could be a metaphor for why bother? but he will bother another time. To summarise what I really think about them is…they are a compelling listen at the worst of times. Here is a link to the video they made for the song.
November 28th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Liking it Des, liking it. Good tune, good post. Got to listen to a bit more Elbow, that’s a good intro.
November 29th, 2008 at 2:54 pm
I’ve only tried their “Seldom Seen Kid” and it grew on me bad!
I guess I should try other ELBOW stuff.