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Back Story: Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys!

DIY finds out just how their latest album 'Build A Rocket Boys!' came into being.

Posted 26th March 2011, 7:44pm in Interviews
Back Story: Elbow - Build A Rocket Boys! Behind every album there’s the story of its inception. Granted, sometimes it’s boring, but occasionally it’s actually quite interesting. DIY catches up with Elbow’s keyboard player and home brewed producer Craig Potter to find out just how their latest album ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’ came into being.

How did 'Build A Rocket Boys!' come into being? What was your starting point?
We started writing on the road, as we were touring with [last album] ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. We made an effort to make sure we had rooms backstage at most of the venues so we got started straight away. We’ve learned from mistakes in the past that you have to keep up with the writing rather than take too much of a break or it takes too long to get back into it.

Your last album was created in a more linear fashion than your previous efforts, is that a method you’ve carried forward?
Yeah, it was the same from about half way through. We get fifty odd ideas that whittle down to 11 or so songs, about half of which we think are definitely going to make the album, then we start to put them together and think what could come next. Where they could sit on an album and what songs might be missing, what the album might need. So yeah, it was done in a very similar way. Not from the very beginning, but we wrote songs for the first year or so and then started putting it together.

Was it difficult, starting to write this new album on tour?
It was, we were quite hungover at the time. It was “Come on, come on, get up. We’ve got a few hours before soundcheck and we should get something done.” But other than that it’s good. It’s good to be knocking around a venue and popping in and out of the writing room.

Did the live shows you were playing influence the record at all?
Once you’ve played arenas and things like that, it’s difficult to not think about it but it doesn’t make a difference in terms of writing the songs. It’s strange, the best stuff that works well in arenas isn’t necessarily always the big anthemic jump around ones. A lot of our quieter songs from the first album and from way back work well because they’re quite grand sounding even though they’re laid back tunes.

Guy’s said that ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’ bears a resemblance to your debut. Was there an effort to go back to your roots?
No, not at all. We started writing stuff with a bit more groove, which we had done in the past. A lot of it comes from the songs; I think this set is by far Guy’s strongest, and as a result, I think the album is definitely our best yet. But it wasn’t like “Let’s do an album like [debut LP] ‘Asleep in the Back’” at all, because personally I think ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ tops it.

The Mercury win for ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ saw a lot more eyes on Elbow. How have you balanced the expectations of your long-time fans, with the new ones?
You can’t really do anything other than sit down and write songs, to be honest. There’s maybe more pressure in some ways but it’s not as much as when we were writing ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ because we didn’t know whether it was going to be released, we didn’t have a label at the time. You could think that maybe we should make sure that this is more commercial, but pressures come from all over the place; at the minute, we’ve got a much bigger fan base so in a way we know that we’re going to sell a certain amount in the first month anyway, we know it’s going to do pretty well. So there’s maybe less pressure because we know that a lot of people will hear it. There’s a lot of really stripped back arrangements on this album, which is something that we’ve always wanted to do. It’s almost like the album that we’ve always wanted to make.

How does the dynamic work when it comes to producing your own band?
I don’t walk around and shout at people. We’ve always produced our own stuff, it’s just that I’ve taken on that lead producer role; I’ve gradually built the skills to take that on. Everyone gets involved in how things are gonna sound so there’s no big separation or anything like that.

It must be tempting to keep tinkering with the record during the production stages. How do you know when it’s done?
There are different ways of looking at this. As far as mixing and recording, there’s one way of thinking that a mix or a production is never finished. It’s like anything creative really, it’s abandoned; it’s like “there you go, there it is.” Some songs just have to be a certain way. There’s a song called ‘The River’ on the new album that is just piano, guitar and vocal, oh, and choir as well. It’s a very stripped down arrangement and it had to be like that. There was no question, we weren’t going to add anything else. So there are always songs like that and then there are songs that you feel that you have to tinker around with but I suppose it comes from experience. We know that less is more.

Elbow’s new album ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’ is out now via Fiction.

Taken from the April 2011 issue of DIY, available now. For more details click here.
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