Asleep in the Back
The debut, gathered from four years of sessions after Island dropped them, with Newborn at its center.
Elbow, 2001
- Released
- 7 May 2001
- Recorded
- 1997-2001
- Studio
- Parr Street Studios, Liverpool; Moles Studio, Bath; Real World Studios; Limousine Studios; the Elbow Rooms
- Label
- V2
- Producer
- Steve Osborne, Ben Hillier, Danny Evans and Elbow
- Length
- 61:41
Assembled from sessions between 1997 and 2001 at several studios, among them Parr Street in Liverpool, where Ben Hillier mixed his tracks, a studio in France, and Moles Studio in Bath, where Newborn was recorded. The band wrote all the music and Guy Garvey all the lyrics. The title track was not on the first pressing, which ran to ten songs, and Japanese copies added Vum Garda.
It averages 82 on Metacritic from 19 reviews. NME gave it nine out of ten, while the AV Club's Stephen Thompson felt it favored sounds over songs. Pitchfork raised its score from 7.4 to 8.4 for the 2009 deluxe edition, which added the Noisebox EP versions, a Radio 1 session for Steve Lamacq, live recordings from the Astoria and a film by Soup Collective. For its twentieth anniversary in 2021, B-sides and session tracks came to streaming.
Track listing
- Any Day Now6:17
- Red5:11
- Little Beast4:15
- Powder Blue4:31
- Bitten by the Tailfly6:16
- Asleep in the Back3:47
- Newborn7:36
- Don't Mix Your Drinks3:16
- Presuming Ed (Rest Easy)5:26
- Coming Second4:56
- Can't Stop4:36
- Scattered Black and Whites5:30
Personnel
- Guy Garvey vocals
- Mark Potter guitar
- Craig Potter keyboards
- Pete Turner bass
- Richard Jupp drums
- The Elbow Choir choir
- Ian Burdge cello on Red
- Francoise Lemoignan saxophone on Powder Blue
- Nick Coen brass on Bitten by the Tailfly
- Bob Sastri brass on Bitten by the Tailfly
- Danton Supple engineer
- Steve Lloyd engineer
- Andrea Wright assistant engineer
More from Elbow
The Seldom Seen Kid (2008)
Sources
- Asleep in the Back, Wikipedia
- Asleep in the Back (UK CD), MusicBrainz
- Elbow: Asleep in the Back, The AV Club (2002-04-19)
- Elbow stream rare track for Asleep in the Back at 20, uDiscover Music (2021-05-07)
- Interview with Craig Potter, Tape Op (2008-11)