Elbow Releases The Best Of LP

December 3, 2017

Elbow’s brand new The Best Of LP encompasses nearly two decades of music.

Hot-on-the-heels of elbow’s appearance on NBC’s The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where they performed current single “Magnificent (She Says)” and fan favorite “One Day Like This”, the band has now released The Best Of album.

On November 24th, elbow released a handpicked collection of their best moments to date. The album, which covers two CDs worth in its deluxe form, features tracks from all the band’s seven studio albums to date and highlights their incredible musical output over the last eighteen years from the release of the “Newborn” EP in 1999. Also featured on the album as a bonus track is the band’s version of The Beatles “Golden Slumbers,” as heard on the current John Lewis holiday commercial directed by Michel Gondry.

Front-man and lyricist Guy Garvey explains of the forthcoming release:

“Best Of’s are a good way of introducing new fans to a big back catalog. My first Leonard Cohen album was ‘The Best Of’, same with Fleetwood Mac and Nick Drake. It took ages for us to decide what should go on ours but we got there in the end. We are really proud of this. It’s full of memories.”

The Best Of comes in two versions. The standard version features global hits “One Day Like This” and “Grounds For Divorce,” alongside their current US single “Magnificent (She Says),” taken from the band’s current studio album and UK Number One, Little Fictions. Earlier work is represented by live favorites “Mirrorball,” “Scattered Black and Whites,” “Leaders Of The Free World” and “Lippy Kids,”“a gorgeous meditation on adolescence” (The Guardian) and a standout moment in all elbow live shows.

The second version is the deluxe release, which goes further into the band’s history and album releases, again spanning their entire career to date. The song that first brought the band to mass public attention, “Newborn,” is included along with its follow up and fellow NME Single Of The Week, “Any Day Now” and“The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver’” the song the band performed live on the night that they won the 2008 Mercury Music Prize for “The Seldom Seen Kid.” This version also contains the band’s most recent original recording, “Kindling (Fickle Flame)” featuring John Grant.

The album highlights an incredible ongoing career which has encompassed the Ivor Novello winning “One Day Like This” and “Grounds for Divorce,” the quadruple platinum album The Seldom Seen Kid and two UK Number One albums; 2014’s The Take Off and Landing of Everything and this year’s Little Fictions. Additionally, the band had won 2008’s Mercury Music Prize (for The Seldom Seen Kid), the 2009 BRITS Best British Group and a host of NME, Q and Mojo Awards.

Elbow have been lauded for one of the landmark Pyramid Stage performances at Glastonbury Festival, collaborated with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra. In 2012 they were commissioned to write “First Steps” which sound-tracked the BBC’S London Olympics TV coverage with the band also performing at the closing ceremony in the Olympic Stadium to a global television audience of 750 million people. This year’s secret appearance at Glastonbury’s Park Stage drew a record crowd on site and was the most watched set from the festival on BBC.

Always a band that has attracted deserved critical praise for their recordings, (elbow was the first act in history to receive four consecutive 9/10 album reviews from NME), this best of album is the perfect introduction to the amazing musical legacy to date of one of the country’s most beloved and most successful acts, demonstrating that most rare thing in modern music; a band whose story and influence continues to grow with every release.

“The Best Of” is available in the U.S. as a standard and deluxe digital download from 24th November.