New York, NY (Top40 Charts) elbow return with their tenth studio album, 'AUDIO VERTIGO', out today via Polydor/GEFFEN. Recorded throughout 2023 at the band's individual studios, Migration Studios, Gloucestershire, and finalized at the band's facility at Blueprint Studios, Salford, the album marks a significant step change for the group following 2021's 'Flying Dream 1'.
In the words of lead singer and lyricist Guy Garvey, 'AUDIO VERTIGO' was built from "gnarly, seedy grooves created by us playing together in garagey rooms" and is both more direct and sonically varied by purpose that its predecessor.
Paired with the album release today, elbow have unveiled a music video for the focus track, "Things I've Been Telling Myself For Years," directed by The Wonder Brothers and Shoot The Sound.
Characterized by the band as an album heavy on stomp, swing, and infectious oil-can funk beats, 'AUDIO VERTIGO' sees elbow on the front foot, fusing their love of varied and various styles on a collection that ranges from the Beastie Boys meets Bonham breaks of opener (and album focus track) "Things I've Been Telling Myself For Years", through the "theme for a futuristic cop show", (Guy again), of lead single "Lover's Leap", which Stereogum called "a song that infused their sound with bright, hard-hitting energy in the form of blaring horns and electronic beats," to the infectiously funky "Balu", hailed by Brooklyn Vegan as "borderline funky, drenched in horns".
The wide screen ambition doesn't end with the music. Guy delivers a lyrical sweep on the album that considers our obsession with star crossed lovers, admonishes, and forgives his self-delusion, puzzles the nature of loss in a digital age, and narrates a real-life knife fight, all the while finding friends, real and imagined, and experiences, genuine and mythical, along the way. Long a fan of BBC Radio 4's 'In Our Time', the lyrics of 'AUDIO VERTIGO' match that program's scale and scope in their ambition and their execution, including surely the only recorded presence of the Chandrasekhar Limit in a pop song in "Knife Fight".
Early critical responses to AUDIO VERTIGO, have been overwhelmingly positive with MOJO delivering a 4-star review and noting that 'their tenth is suitably landmark' whilst PROG thrilled to 'the energizing lattice of fizzing synths' that is "Balu'" before declaring that 'their 10th LP is special'.
AUDIO VERTIGO is available now via Polydor/GEFFEN Records on Vinyl album, CD, and digital download.
