Album Review: Elbow, Little Fictions

When you look up perseverance in a dictionary, there should be a picture of Elbow. The impressive Guy Garvey and company famously toiled away on the sidelines for years before becoming a spectacularly arena-headlining behemoth. Little Fictions is their seventh studio album, and should guarantee another sold out lap of honour and sprint around the summer festival circuit. And why not? 
Interestingly, Little Fictions is the first Elbow album since the departure of long-term drummer Richard Jupp, and they take a slightly different approach to rhythm, adding a dimension of intrigue for those ewho know Elbow’s music well. Kicking off with lead single ‘Magnificent (She Says)’, all the familiar Elbow ingredients are otherwise present and correct; namely Guy Garvey’s unmistakable voice, and a classic slo-mo shuffle from the band once memorably likened to sounding like mortality and the passing of time itself. 
The songs are mostly down-tempo affairs, which is no surprise. 
‘Trust the Sun’, for example, features beautiful use of understated, minimal piano, as well as a typically gentle vocal from Garvey. Elbow refine and hone what they do very successfully on Little Fictions. That said, not having lived with the album, it feels like there aren’t as many anthemic hits as there were on the Mercury-winning The Seldom Seen Kid. 
There is still plenty to admire here. Elbow are the real thing.
Listen: Magnificent (She Says)