Talking about the album's opening track, "This Blue World", Garvey originally stated, "It's almost saying, everything from the beginning of time was leading up to the day we met.

"[5] Unsworth also influenced some of the album's other tracks: she suggested the title of "My Sad Captains" from a line in Shakespeare's play Antony and Cleopatra in which Mark Antony speaks about his drinking partners ("Come, let's have one other gaudy night; call to me all my sad captains; fill our bowls; once more, let's mock the midnight bell").

According to Garvey the song is about "missing my friends that have dropped out of the drinking culture that we all met in, or moved away, or died".

Keyboard player and producer Craig Potter was chiefly responsible for "Real Life (Angel)", his brother guitarist Mark Potter wrote and recorded "Honey Sun" at home; bassist Pete Turner composed "Colour Fields" using apps on his iPad; and the rhythm section of Turner, Mark Potter and drummer Richard Jupp created "Fly Boy Blue/Lunette" in the studio in the absence of Garvey and of Mark's brother Craig.

On the same day, Elbow's YouTube channel posted a video of the band performing the song in the studio, directed by long-time collaborators The Soup Collective.

Writing for The Daily Telegraph, reviewer Neil McCormick awarded The Take Off and Landing of Everything a maximum score of five stars, stating that it was "fantastic: an album of world-beating standard yet still intimate and friendly, an epic of the everyday, a romance of the real.

[22] Q's Tom Doyle hailed the album, saying, "These 10 magnificent songs see the singer and lyricist trying to get his head around life, death, love, the universe and what he calls 'the mysteries of the human heart'...

"[26] Referring to the group's concert at Jodrell Bank in 2012, Mojo's Victoria Segal noted, "You don't need the world's largest radio telescope to pick up the issues of mortality and make-or-break change pulsing through the record... Plotting their course through these highs and lows – those take-offs and landings – Elbow are no clearer than anyone else about how they will reach the final destination.

"[23] Some critics were disappointed that the band had stayed too close to the sound of their previous records, with NME reviewer Emily Mackay saying that "too often you feel the band collapse back into comfy...making music shouldn't always be as easy as giving someone a big sonic hug"; Mackay awarded the album six out of ten.

[24] Pitchfork Media's Jason Heller, who scored The Take Off and Landing of Everything 6.2 out of 10.0, shared this view, stating that "the album dangles there, an effortlessly leaden exhibition of glum triumphalism—and an example of what makes Elbow, at its least potent, so subtly unsubtle.