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Apr 30, 2014On its sixth studio effort, Guy Garvey and company soar to new heights, even if the vocalist experienced a bit of personal turmoil in the form of a difficult breakup during the recording process.
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Apr 7, 2014The Take Off and Landing of Everything is another fine release from a band that has yet to steer wrong.
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Mar 28, 2014It takes several spins to fully comprehend the ambitious scope on display here as this is the kind of record that unravels the longer one ventures into its gorgeous textures, subtle progressive leanings and consistently clever lyricism.
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MojoMar 21, 2014It's not a giant leap but Elbow haven't been embraced to be wreckers of civilization. [Apr 2014, p.88]
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Mar 17, 2014The Take Off and Landing of Everything gives us mostly familiar surroundings, but it makes for fine company.
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Mar 17, 2014The Take Off And Landing Of Everything is the sound of a band prising an encouraging aesthetic edge from the sheer enjoyment of ageing. It bodes well for the future.
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Q MagazineMar 14, 2014The overall impression is one of a band who are now masterfully in control of their craft. [Apr 2014, p.111]
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Mar 14, 2014It takes a few spins to fully appreciate the complexity and ambitious scope at hand here, but this is the type of album that unfolds the longer one marinates in its charms.
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Mar 13, 2014Perhaps it’s deliberate that throughout The Take Off and Landing of Everything, hardly anything truly takes off. Instead the album dangles there, an effortlessly leaden exhibition of glum triumphalism--and an example of what makes Elbow, at its least potent, so subtly unsubtle.
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Mar 12, 2014In a career predicated on being album artists showing the powerful link between repetition and expectation, Elbow appears to have hit a stride again.
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Mar 11, 2014It’s not easy packing so many different styles of music into one song--especially ones that don’t stray too far from home in terms of baseline mood--but it certainly helps when so many of them fall between the five-and seven-minute mark, as on the sixth album from British act Elbow.
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Mar 11, 2014It’s that refusal to paint in a single shade that makes The Take Off... such a fully formed listen from front to back.
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Mar 11, 2014The Take Off and Landing of Everything is better still [than 2011's Build a Rocket Boys!], demonstrating that the band knows how to seize the spoils of success.
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Mar 11, 2014A work of faultless skill and assured sophistication, The Take Off and Landing of Everything positions Elbow as one of the most quietly ambitious and rewarding acts of our generation.
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Mar 10, 2014This is stately, gentlemanly music--the sound of aging gracefully.
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Mar 10, 2014Between the pub and the high seas, Elbow reset their mission statement here: to navigate the heart’s tides with their art intact.
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UncutMar 7, 2014There's a sustained congruence about the rhythms and textures that make The Take Off and Landing of Everything seem like an extended and mediation on certain musical and lyrical themes. [Apr 2014, p.72]
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Mar 7, 2014The results are fantastic: an album of world-beating standard yet still intimate and friendly, an epic of the everyday, a romance of the real.
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Mar 7, 2014They may have hit national treasure status a while back, with all the advantages and pitfalls that that can bring, but as long as they carry on producing music with as much soul, heart and beauty that’s contained on The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Elbow will be with us for some while to come.
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Mar 6, 2014You couldn't say there were any jaw-dropping surprises on Elbow's sixth album--but then it's dependability and craftsmanship that made them huge, and that's all in place.
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Mar 5, 2014That they have dealt with personal strife and getting older while recalibrating their sound and their approach to songwriting is an impressive feat indeed.
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Mar 5, 2014Elbow sound revitalised here with Garvey proving himself once more to be one of the most eloquent British songwriters around.
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Mar 5, 2014Compelling and absorbing, The Take Off is a rich and rewarding record.
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Mar 5, 2014Despite being written by different combinations of the line-up, it’s possibly their most homogenous album, most songs riding gentle pulses of percussion, organ and piano, guitars circling the action.
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Mar 5, 2014They didn’t quite manage to move past The Seldom Seen Kid on Build a Rocket Boys!, but with Take Off, they’ve both cemented their place as a British institution and hinted that their best might yet be to come.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 36 out of 39
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Mixed: 2 out of 39
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Negative: 1 out of 39
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Mar 13, 2014
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Aug 14, 2016
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Apr 7, 2015