Kinda average (we say)

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[5.00]

Katie Gill: Insert your own joke about how it’s really not that magnificent here. Elbow give us a halfway decent song perfect for closing ceremonies and slow dance montages, where the most interesting things are the strings and that stunning build around the three minute mark.
[5]

Iain Mew: Elbow’s tally of paternal-ish songs with parentheses titles reaches three, and it tracks their career quite nicely to go from 2001’s “Presuming Ed (Rest Easy),” with its eerie amniotic ambience and mix of wonder and “chill your fucking bones,” to this. There’s a clear line of both realism and sentimentality right through, but the proportions have swapped and been more throughly mixed into music and lyrics alike. Now the complexity supporting the depth of feeling is just there in the small touches in Craig Potter’s production and things like the string section lurch, over- and understated in the best Elbow way. It’s a shame there isn’t a single image as striking as “talking your way to the heart of the citadel” from “Real Life (Angel),” but how the story spools outwards and backwards from a single moment still gives something for repeated listens to draw out.
[7]

A.J. Cohn: Handled well, a tender yet knowing adult take on the unbridled, naïve optimism of a child could be moving. But this track, from Garvey’s drippy vocals to the mushy orchestral backing, is a maudlin mess.
[3]

Will Adams: The verses set a great mood, with seemingly laid-back noodle-y rock with undercurrents of agitated guitar and bass lines; the chorus goes overboard with the strings and things get maudlin.
[5]

Jonathan Bradley: I feel I should applaud the way Elbow’s florid orchestration lends this tempered Brit-rock a dainty splendor — it is arresting and memorable — but it sounds too much like art-pap: starch smothered in goop.
[4]

Tim de Reuse: Guy Garvey’s theatrical, honey-thick voice is just about the only voice I can imagine pulling off lyrics as syrupy as these, but he doesn’t quite pass with flying colors; the whole thing teeters dangerously between a pleasant nostalgia (the driving, circular chord progressions, the bare verses) and an oversaturated melodrama (the dramatic cadences, the stifling string sections). Neither side really wins out — there are just about as many moments that feel breathtaking as there are moments that feel trite.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Theoretically this combination of scratch guitar and strings sounds okeedokee with me, but the singer’s chalky histrionics require Mark Hollis more than Chris Martin in a rabbit burrow. 
[5]

Thomas Inskeep: Dear Brits: just because Coldplay are such a global phenom doesn’t mean that all UK rock has to be “inspirational” bullshit like this. And if you want to hear a great song titled “Magnificent,” go for this.
[2]

Ramzi Awn: I don’t want to like the word “magnificent” but Elbow get away with it, and the strings in the second verse sweep like the best. I too always get a little wistful when I think of my mother’s cigarettes, and how magnificent she looked smoking them. Overall, the sound is derivative, but stately as well.
[4]

Hannah Jocelyn: This has all of my indie rock-related weaknesses — drum loops, muted guitar riffs, heavily reverberated vocals, and wide string arrangements. The chorus, when those strings become staccato, and Guy Garvey somehow becomes even more prominent and reverberated, does me in further. Elbow have always been a very solid band, but my problem with them is usually their overt earnestness and inability to not go as big as possible (exhibit A: having the entirety of Glastonbury singing “we still believe in love so fuck you”). “Magnificent” has a shitload of earnestness, but with a surprising amount of restraint, and the way Elbow do so much with just those elements, all my Achilles heels, makes the moments like the string swell at 3:38 induce a smile rather than sensory overload.
[7]

Megan Harrington: All the pomp and pomposity, the keyboards and string flourishes, and a baroque word like “magnificent” anchoring the chorus makes this song sound like it’s really about something. I’m not sure it is, but that ambiguity gives the listener space to hear anything they want. 
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