Elbow, Salad Fingers, Lollipops

Thanks to KEXP I've discovered another great band - Elbow. I've copied and pasted part of a review of their newest release, "Leaders of the Free World" - it can be found here(PlayLouder.com)

'Leaders of the Free World' could only have come from 2005, with its rawness and its new millennium dark emotional pleas. It has that melancholic, rainy day sadness of autumn in the north west, that misty rain that never seems to end, mashed in with pastoral - almost whimsical - ooze, that makes British psychedelia far better than most American stuff. Its backdrop is the scuzzy Manchester city centre venues, grimly surrounded by glass towers and fake posh. It is love and heartbreak in Whalley range bedsits, and that sadness that still hangs in the air of the boisterous northern city.

This is Elbow's classic. Their imagination sees them build up some great slabs of music, a clanking percussion that sounds like someone has been checking out Tom Waits drum tracks - soaked in a big room sound and keyboard rushes that trip you. You can feel the drums, it's that visceral. Elbow play it raw like a band who grew up in rock, it's just that they have learned to turn everything down and still hit the same emotional resonance.

I have a bad case of "The Mondays" and I've eaten all my lollipops. Why couldn't it have snowed last night?

Here's a link to Salad Fingers - a disturbing little creature that likes rusty spoons, nettles, and eating sand. There are 7 shorts so far in the Salad Fingers collection, so if you want to see more go to this site for the rest.