Build A Rocket, Boys!

Elbow has been around for some time, and I have downloaded pretty much all of their albums. I have never actually listened to any them. This happens frequently. I download an artist's entire catalog based on a recommendation, and those albums sit in the dusty attic of my external hard drive while I listen to The National's High Violet for two months straight. C'est la vie.

Elbow's newest effort is Build A Rocket Boys! and it takes it's name from a line in this song, Lippy Kids.

Guy Garvey, who kinda looks like a heavy in a Guy Ritchie film, sings in that slightly-gravelly Manchester-accented voice about lippy kids hanging out on the corner, reminding him of his days trying to perfect "that simian stroll." Nobody ever grasps the way the memory of their evaporated youth will weigh on them years down the road. When it is finally gone, the recognition of that fact can turn us all into melancholy bastards, spiteful and mean to the kids today with their loud music and so forth. Garvey goes all in on the melancholy part, reminiscing about how he "came down from the trees" for a "freshly painted angel," spending his days "walking on walls, stealing booze and hour-long hungry kisses" but refuses to be a carmudgeon, instead urging those damn lippy kids on the corner to "build a rocket, boys" in the song's soaring refrain. It gets me every time.