Album: Elbow Dead In The Boot (Fiction)

Most B-sides compilations seem to have been thrown together to fulfill contracts but Dead In The Boot has a form and substance beyond that.

 It's far from exhaustive, with tracks cherry-picked for quality and sequenced non-chronologically. Indeed, if anything, there's a touch too many of the tender piano ostinatos, punctuated only occasionally by the likes of "McGregor", a live track with a Tom Waitsian chain-gang rhythm and one of Guy Garvey's most sylvan vocals. The early Radiohead influence is most evident in 2001's "Lucky With Disease", but their peak period, on this showing, was 2005, furnishing the languid lope of "The Long War Shuffle" and the soothing throb of "Gentle As". 

Download: Lucky With Disease; The Long War Shuffle; Gentle As; McGregor