Of all the exaggerating hype mavens who manically laud a band with the pretension of discovering its supposed genius while harboring a fickle desire to eventually tear them down, the British press truly operates in a class by itself.
Presented with mostly painfully somber and utterly derivative mop-tops who harbor no desire past whining about how much they hate their girl-devastated lives, the Brit mags erect a superficial critical-fawning. The British, who pretend to take rock with a devout seriousness but blindly follow hype as if the gospel, only stoke the fire by running in out in herds to hear the next big thing.
Arriving in the States shrouded in the deafening accolades of their compatriots, the British boys find themselves fat off the lard of their praise, but ill-equipped to provide the gravitas lacking in their self-absorbed drivel.
Emerging from the ashes of Brit-pop's mid-'90s resurrection, these bands became an epidemic: Travis couldn't rise above Fran Healey's pathetic songwriting despite Nigel Godrich's best efforts; Coldplay appeared a worthy successor to the Stone Roses but slowly revealed little more than Buckley family envy at its core; Starsailor, with James Walsh's melodramatic lyrical and vocal overkill and the bands forced crescendos, may be the biggest joke of them all.
But try as we may to ignore British hype-machine, sometimes it actually gets it right.
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Even as Coldplay's Chris Martin's ugly mug strolled down an empty beach at least once an hour on MTV, the British press championed some of their best exports since Manchester's Big Beat boom. The Dove's "Lost Souls" emanated like a mixtape of Radiohead echoing the best trends to sweep across Western Europe in a decade.
Similarly eclectic, Badly Drawn Boy brought back a sincere sloppiness to Beatles pop that Elliot Smith misplaced on way to major-label mediocrity; Clinic produced grooves funkier than the Strokes with an unobtrusive wit and cut-and-paste dynamism.
With guarded hesitancy we thus accept the latest exports from the Isles, knowing that returning it to its sender may mean losing out on a jewel like Super Furry Animals or Turin Brakes.
Coming on the heels of Starsailor's pulpy "Love Is Here," the latest overseas shipment, the five-piece Manchester band Elbow, comes suspiciously packaged with two dents: a horrendous name and the label of a prog-rock Radiohead, the dorkiest dubbing since "From the makers of Dungeons and Dragons."
The expectations stacked against them, Elbow produces a splendid debut with "Asleep in the Back," a slippery, mellow journey that shift moods and genres with an ease that recalls the Doves and an idealistic Radiohead.
The music adapts an organic atmosphere; the delicate songs unfold unforced so while the music itself doesn't escalate very far past a whisper, its unusual structure enthrallingly defies the rules of Britpop. A sinister bass line, looping drums, eerie organs, bells and meandering guitars effortlessly saunter in and out of "Any Day Now" for over six minutes.
On "Don't Mix Your Drinks" and "Can't Stop," the band mixes acoustic starkness and muted percussion to produce songs of haunting beauty. Borrowing from the Beta Band, Elbow melds unconventional, post-rock percussion with the sparse flair of electric bursts ("Bitten by a Tailfly").
As much of the band remains a cohesive whole, Elbow is overwhelmingly singer/songwriter Guy Garvey's band. His voice fills the tracks with as much subtly as the rest of the bands instruments, beginning in a whisper before soaring to high points without excess, a rarity in powerfully voiced singers. He's as miserable as all white British male singer-songwriters apparently are, but a pin of hope prevents a grenade of pathos from blowing up in his face. Unlike most of his chums, he's not content to wallow in misery if he can still get out of it.
Garvey's songwriting ability still has some ways to come, though; his metaphors sometimes try too hard for significance. "I'll be the corpse on your bathtub - useless / I'll be as deaf as a post / If you hold me like a newborn," he sings on "Newborn," but the band distracts from this by sustaining over seven minutes of fluctuating dramatic tension.
Shedding light on an obscure band like Elbow, the British press almost makes us forgive them for Travis and Starsailor.
Almost.
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