Album: Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!

Image by Guus Krol via FlickrLike a bowl of hot soup after getting soaked to the bone Elbow deliver another album full of comfort and humility to lift the heart; an album that would take you to the pub and listen patiently to what ails you.

Build A Rocket Boys! is to it's very core obviously the sibling to 2008's Mercury winner Seldom Seen Kid, not as instantly anthemic, a subtle progression. This, then, is Elbow; a band that quietly get on with the no-nonsense business of making emotionally charged songs without any unnecessary drama. That create tightly-wound, complicated multi-layered melodies and deliver them with straightforward simplicity.

Here they continue with the themes picked up in its predecessor - nature, love, growing up, friends - and weave an intricate background of piano, orchestra, choir, hand claps, finger clicks and Guy Garvey's big blokishly soft bellow of a voice.

This album is full of tales of everyday life, of grand gestures in the most ordinary of settings, it's an album with huge heart. It's poetic in its rhythmic, soaring delivery, touching and truthful. It doesn't rely on the tried-and-tested Kinks-style characterization but speaks in a tone familiar within many a group of friends; loving jibes, mocking self-deprecation, humility and adoration.

A slow-burner, shy, but give it your time and it will show you its beauty. It takes its time. It won't get in your face, force itself on you. But slowly, slowly it gets under your skin, it envelopes you in a great big gentle cuddle and lets you know that everything is going to be OK.