The Children's Album Thread

Subject: The Children's Album Thread Wed 24 Sep 2008, 07:07

Billboard wrote:: Mercury Winners Elbow Follows 'Kid' With Children’s Songs
September 23, 2008
By Richard Smirke, Manchester

Elbow, recently crowned victors of the 2008 Nationwide Mercury Music Prize, plans to follow their prize-winning set "The Seldom Seen Kid" (Fiction/Polydor) by working on an album of children's music and accompanying animated film, the band's singer, Guy Garvey, has revealed to Billboard.biz.

"We initially thought that it would be great to make music for children because the lads in the band have got kids and they were saying how little really decent music for children there is. The more that we thought about it the more that we liked the idea," Garvey says. "We've quite often been up for having songs on children's animated films, but we thought that it would be great to actually be at the starting point for that process."

According to Garvey, work on the as-yet-untitled project will take place alongside writing and recording of the group's official fifth album, with the band set to go into the studio to begin preliminary work on both records prior to its U.K./European tour, scheduled Oct. 6 to Nov. 15. The Manchester-based band will then resume writing and recording in early 2009.

"It might not be something that's complete before the next record," Garvey explains. "The first thing to do is find the story and that's great fun to research. I want to do something that really fires kids’ imaginations. I think you can go somewhere in writing for children that you can't do with adults. I think adults would just say 'Oh, that's bizarre' and shut their ears. Whereas [when writing for children] you can really go absolutely nuts and kids will follow you and love it."

Elaborating on plans for a proposed animated film to accompany the album, Garvey cited Jeff Wayne's 1978 concept album “The War Of The Worlds” (Sony BMG), based around H.G. Wells’ novel, as a loose inspiration for the project, with band members taking a direct hand in choosing who will animate and voice the film, once a theme and narrative has been decided on.

"I thinking that's it going to be something to do with flying [in] dreams," says the singer. "It's got to be something that not only works for us, but that works for the kids and when it's read to them that they can get into. That's what I love about it. It's the most honest thing that we could do right now."

“The Seldom Seen Kid” has spent the last two weeks in the U.K. top ten thanks to the sales impact of the Mercury win. It moved from No. 61 to No. 7 in the week after the victory; U.K. entertainment retailer HMV said its sales of the Elbow album increased by 688%.

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Wed 24 Sep 2008, 11:11

Thanks for this article. Sounds pretty interesting to me.

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Wed 24 Sep 2008, 11:40

Sounds brilliant! I would love it if they did it!

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Wed 24 Sep 2008, 13:53

i heard them saying theyd do it in the pukklepop interview...

sounds good man Very Happy

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Wed 24 Sep 2008, 17:03

Yeah, that would be amazing Very Happy

would appeal to me Very Happy

(Mental age of 3 here Rolling Eyes

)

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Thu 25 Sep 2008, 16:40

That sounds great! My little boy would love that (growing up in our house he's had Elbow forced on him almost since birth)

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Tue 28 Oct 2008, 03:11

This is interesting. Would love to hear the end product actually. I'm sure I would enjoy it. Razz

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Wed 29 Oct 2008, 18:51

Yeah, I'm quite excited about it! Sounds potentially wonderful.

Subject: Re: The Children's Album Thread Sat 08 Nov 2008, 13:35

Just been listening to In the Company Of...
Sounds like this is a definite project - although I don't know how likely it is (but would love it Laughing

) if they did get Mark Langean as the villain and Björk as the fairy. Razz

» Uncut Aug 2011 - Album by Album
» ELBOW ALBUM ARTWORK! only a few left - original album artwork!
» The 'how was your day?' thread:
» The pets thread
» The Elbow TV Thread