Elbow, “Audio Vertigo.”

Some fans of Elbow found the U.K. band’s previous album, pandemic-era Flying Dream 1 (2021) to be a little too quiet and sleepy. They’ll be glad to hear that its newest outing, Audio Vertigo, is louder, darker, heavier and wittier.

The band’s 10th album is a culmination of its strengths, even as it branches out, with what singer Guy Garvey calls “gnarly, seedy grooves” pervading the record.

“Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years” begins the album by building an ominous mood, with pulsing bass and stuttering drumming. Garvey, as poetic and self-critical as ever, lists his failings in his warm baritone.

“I’m the dashboard hula girl of nodding self-deception/ Here’s to never accepting slight adjustment or correction,” he sings over buzzing guitar and synths. Garvey gets a lot of Elbow’s spotlight as the frontman, but everyone in the band is a formidable musical talent. The Potter brothers, guitarist Mark and keyboardist Craig, are wildly innovative. Craig Potter also produced and mixed the album.

Audio Vertigo finds Elbow playing with brass (arranged by Garvey). “Lover’s Leap” struts in with horns that are funky like Fela, only to be followed by buzzing synths and distorted vocals. The song effectively mixes organic and electronic sounds, while Garvey sings about the lengths we go to for love. “Take me up to lovers’ leap/ Throw my body off the side/ There to meet my waiting bride,” he sings.

He’s still great at making grand pronouncements like he did on Elbow’s huge hit “One Day Like This” (from 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid) but he’s also startlingly good at heartfelt asides, like when he sings, “Though there isn’t an artist alive/ Who could get your eyes.”

The horns also appear on “Balu,” popping in when they’re least expected. At first, driving industrial guitar and bass are layered over with sharper, high-pitched synths, and Garvey is growling about how he “split for a tryst with a rust belt girl with a Plantagenet fringe” (his wordplay is as droll as ever). Then, suddenly, the horns are there, weirdly effervescent in the gloom and yet not at all out of place as Garvey mourns a doomed romance.

“I’ll never be whole without you/ But I’ll never grow in your shadow,” he sings.

“Her to Earth” rides a manic beat and a grooving keyboard line with a murmuration of voices underneath Garvey, who declares softly, “We live in a troubling age/ But the world has given me arms for you/ Stay my bonny girl, stay.” Audio Vertigo contains echoes of the best of the band’s past; “Her to the Universe” combines the unsettling power of “Dexter and Sinister” (from 2019’s Giants of All Sizes) with the romance of “Mirrorball” (from The Seldom Seen Kid).

Drummer Alex Reeves, who replaced Richard Jupp in 2016, is now more fully integrated in Elbow, and was a co-writer on this album. The band wrote the songs for Audio Vertigo “around the drum kit,” Garvey has said, and it gives them a punchiness and urgency absent on their last album. Reeves’ excellent timing and sense of swing are the scaffolding around which Elbow is able to assemble its deft sonic explorations.

Reeves’ toe-tapping drumbeat on “The Picture” brings an immediate energy that Garvey builds upon with his quick patter: “There’s no diving, no bombing and no heavy petting/ No moon for the crooning/ No sun for the setting/ No road to the past/ No ever forgetting your face.” Lyrically, Garvey goes from flippant to earnest in the space of a few lines in his warm, yet commanding voice. Then Potter busts into a surf guitar line over Pete Turner’s smooth, subtle bass line.

Audio Vertigo is fittingly representative of Elbow’s previous work even as it adventurously strides out beyond it. For a band that could easily rest upon its laurels (2009 Mercury prize, 2012 London Olympics theme “First Steps,” three Ivor Novello awards), Elbow stays restless in the best way. The band sounds grungier and groovier showing it still has a lot of life.

Follow Rachel Alm at Twitter.com/thouzenfold and Instagram.com/thousandfold.