The Seldom Seen Kid

Elbow made it with no outside help at all. Craig Potter recorded and mixed it entirely in Pro Tools in the band's room at Blueprint, which was still being built when they started, and told Sound On Sound there was no desk. The songs lived in one evolving session for two years, with ideas first caught on a portable field recorder, including the loop behind Grounds for Divorce. The stairwell gave a better drum sound than the main room, and Richard Jupp made the percussion on Weather to Fly by working the sustain pedal of a piano. Garvey wrote the string parts and sang them to the three players, who were recorded several times with the room microphone moved between takes, and Potter ran vocals, reverbs and drums through guitar amplifiers. Richard Hawley sings and plays lead guitar on The Fix.

Drowned in Sound gave it nine out of ten on release day and the album averages 82 on Metacritic. It won the Mercury Prize in September 2008 and went triple platinum in the UK. On 17 January 2009 the band played it in full with the BBC Concert Orchestra, arranged by Nick Ingman, in Studio One at Abbey Road, and the concert was released that March. Garvey said the start of that show felt like unicycling on a high wire.