The dead man walking walks away again

We've never gone short of bizarre things said by football managers. Even before the influx of foreign coaches, there were plenty of notable (or notorious) things uttered by the likes of Ron Atkinson, Brian Clough and Private Eye's "ashen-faced" Ron Knee, beleaguered boss of Neasden FC, and the magazine's go-to foil for anything football related. But the arrival of managers from abroad has brought with it the occasional mangling of their second (or third or - take note Brits - fourth language).

Last season, Claudio Ranieri brought us his baffling, but endearing "dilly-ding, dilly-dong". And yesterday, Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp, in reacting to Leicester City's sacking of Ranieri on Thursday night, declared: "For me there have been a few strange decisions in 16/17: Brexit, Trump, Ranieri.". There. Right there, the sacking of a football manager bracketed in with Britain's unexpected European departure and the insane Dorito being elected President of the United States.

But then while Klopp's sentiment may have been slightly wonky, it wasn't misplaced. Even José Mourinho chose to compare his own most recent sacking from Chelsea with Ranieri's from Leicester on Thursday (an irony, given that it was defeat to Ranieri's Leicester City that precipitated Mourinho's departure from Chelsea, as manager of the-then defending champions slid closer to the trap door, exactly as Leicester are doing now). Perhaps Mourinho's sporting of a Manchester United training top bearing the initials "CR" was laying it on a little too thick.

It would be the coldest of hearts who'd dismiss the fact that Claudio Ranieri is a much-loved individual. In fact, he'd been that way long before Leicester invited him up the M1 to take over a club desperate to stave off another relegation battle, and which ended up winning the most prestigious - and lucrative - prize in English club football.

Despite a somewhat so-so history at clubs in his native Italy and elsewhere in Europe (Gary Lineker reacted to his appointment with a dismissive "Claudio Ranieri? Really?" tweet), he was seen as a decent, dignified, endearing man. Prior to Leicester, his previous appointment as manager of the Greek national team lasted barely four months, prompting Italian football writer Tommaso Pellizzari to tell the Financial Times’ that Ranieri was “the perfect loser, with a capital L”, and that “everyone in Italy thought he was very nice, polite, kind, but please never call him to my team”. Chelsea fans still hold a torch for the man dubbed 'The Tinkerman', building the foundations that Mourinho built on to win successive Premier League titles in his first two seasons at the club, having replaced Ranieri, the ‘dead man walking’ whom the capricious Roman Abramovich fired in favour of the dashing Portuguese, fresh from winning the Champions League with Porto.

And here is the reality: before Ranieri came to Leicester, he actually had a decent managerial record. It just wasn't laden with glory, all the time. But compared with Arsène Wenger's most recent history at Arsenal, actually, not that bad. Moreover, in winning the Premier League handsomely with Leicester - who'd been 5000-1 outsiders at the start of the 15/16 season, Ranieri endeared himself to the nation. Even the hardest-hearted, deepest-embedded tribalists who unwaveringly follow their clubs without any consideration for any other team, fell for the endearing charm of the Roman. The sadness, then, at his sacking is entirely justified.

"Yesterday my dream died", said Ranieri in a statement. "After the euphoria of last season and being crowned champions, all I dreamt of was staying with Leicester. Sadly this was not to be. The adventure was amazing and will live with me forever. My heartfelt thanks to everybody at the club, everybody who was part of what we achieved, but mostly to the supporters. You took me into your hearts from day one and loved me. I love you too. No-one can ever take away what we achieved together and I hope you think about it and smile every day the way I always will. It was a time of wonderfulness and happiness that I will never forget. It's been a pleasure and an honour to be a champion with all of you."

Nothing can ever take away the fact that Ranieri achieved the almost unfathomably impossible with Leicester. But something has irretrievably been broken this season. Eerily, like Chelsea under Mourinho in his last spell, the players that Ranieri had so delightfully motivated to win the Premier League, have stopped playing for him. While it may have been classless for Leicester City's Thai owners to have sacked the very man who'd brought them unexpected success only last May, the club is once again staring down the barrel of relegation, in a tailspin that it doesn't seem to be pulling out of anytime soon.

Quite what the "painful but necessary" sacking of Ranieri will achieve is not known. The perceived wisdom was that he'd lost the dressing room, that players had actively sought to undermine him with the club's owners over his changing tactics and tinkering. And while there might be historic precedent for this, it seems frustratingly sad that the players Ranieri took over line to remarkable victory in May should have become so jaded and mutinous in February. Perhaps, as he did at Chelsea, 'Uncle' Guus Hiddink is now the solution to sooth bruised egos and help find the players' collective mojo again.

The reality is that it's probably too late. I do, actually, see the logic of Leicester's decision, or at least the business rationale of Premier League survival for the club's owners. But here we enter the choppy emotional waters of what makes football. Shareholders might have a different view, but for a season at least, Claudio Ranieri was the unlikely star of a fairytale, and a box office hit at that. What a sad, sad sequel.

Bowie has the last word

Perhaps it's a generational thing. In November, David Bowie's Blackstar bafflingly missed out being nominated for inclusion in the 2016 BBC Music Awards, even though it - and his death - had been one of the pivotal cultural moments of the entire year, almost from its origin. And then, when the somewhat more prestigious Grammy Awards nominations came out in December, the final album from one of the most influential rock and pop artists of the previous five decades - an album which enigmatically came out two days before his death - failed to feature at all.

Sage-like pieces in the quality press have sought to examine whether there was something to this. After all, Bowie turned 69 on the day Blackstar came out, competing with albums from artists a mere fraction of his vintage. But the point, hopelessly lost by both the BBC and the Grammys, is that Bowie was - at the time of his death - one of the few remaining artists from the 1960s still producing compelling work (albeit only his second studio album since being forced into retirement in 2004) in the second decade of the 21st century. Blackstar was a strange, confounding, beautiful record, laden with clues - we later discovered - to Bowie's failing health. Listening to it more recently, I've heard nuances that never even occurred to me at the time. This is a particular Bowie trait, I've discovered. Not even his most immediate, commercial records (a Let's Dance, for example) are completely devoid of neat, wonderful time capsules that open up of their own accord, as years and even decades pass on.

So, while I successfully avoided last night's Brit Awards (well, you would, wouldn't you), it was extremely satisfying to see Bowie rewarded with both the Best British Male award, and the gong for Best Album, for Blackstar. Some might argue that the Brits - run by the UK music industry trade body (it was once known simply as the British Phonographic Industry Awards, a stuffy, black tie affair) - aren't in touch with popular sentiment. But, despite the event becoming just a regular showbiz gongfest, the Smash Hits Poll Winner's Party it is not.

Bowie's wins last night were extremely valid recognition of what he did for the British music industry, of his actual lifetime's achievement of blazing a trail - perhaps unequalled - of artistic brilliance, of rich creativity and experimentation of both style and substance, continuing a progressiveness that began with The Beatles long into a career that could so easily have fallen into a degree of self-parody, like many of his peers. But not even Paul McCartney or Neil Young - contemporaries of arguably equal merit - could be so fêted.

To make a statement of the bleeding obvious, Bowie won't appear at The Brits again, unless in some future mawkish tribute. With the recognition he deserved for a career comprising brilliance with audacity - traits rarely found together these days - and winning two of the most prestigious prizes of the night - Bowie he can finally leave the stage with a signal to any of those who follow: this is what you need to aim for. And, as his filmmaker son, Duncan Jones, said in a touching acceptance speech on behalf of his dad for the Blackstar album: "This award is for all the kooks, and all the people who make the kooks". To have been 69, and still a kook, is all the justification ever needed for Bowie.

First the pie, now the mash

As someone of - shall we say? - a somewhat less-than 'bronzed Adonis' body shape, the public wringing-out of Sutton United reserve goalkeeper/goalkeeping coach/groundsman Wayne Shaw has been an unedifying spectacle.

But, then, we Brits love a story about a loveable foil. Shaw himself may have courted publicity long before Tuesday night's "piegate" incident at Gander Green Lane: when images first emerged of the 23-stone, 45-year-old with a...um...unique physical profile for a footballer, even a part-timer at a non-league club he was already cast for "top footy bantz", with memes immediately tweeted which revolved around that old terrace staple of "who ate all the pies?".

Well, now we know. But not without Shaw apparently putting himself in league with the Devil - i.e. Sun Bets (shirt sponsors of Sutton's FA Cup 5th round tie with Arsenal) for the stunt in which he conspicuously munched on a pasty while the clock ticked down on the match. Given that the FA Cup is sold on the romantic lore of its "magic", and the prospect of underdog teams doing battle with those from the elite at obscure suburban grounds, sight of the "roly-poly-goalie" engaging with pastry and meats-various should really have become just a part of the competition's glorious mixture of the professional and the amateur.

But, no. The suspicion that Shaw's piefest may have actually contravened FA betting rules has brought about a collective swallowing of something hard and jagged. Shaw himself has apparently resigned from the club "in tears", while the Gambling Commission and the FA are said to be investigating - quite rightly suspicious of the fact Sun Bets had offered odds of 8-1 that Shaw would be filmed consuming some form of pie during the game (although there is already a counter that he was eating a pasty, not a pie, so the bet was null-and-void, anyway).

With honesty, Shaw admitted that he had been aware of the odds on offer but maintained that he didn't place a bet himself though. Still, despite it all probably and naively being a 'bit of fun', Shaw himself has ended up being hung out to dry, disgracefully, even by The Sun newspaper itself, the media associate of Sun Bets. Humbug, methinks.

Fun though this may all be - and there is a strong sense of po-faced joylessness over the official reaction (the Gambling Commission's Richard Watson said, with some justification, "integrity in sport is not a joke") - the saddest part is that Shaw ends up just another loveable loser, an Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards with goalkeeping gloves. And it has detracted from a genuinely impressive performance by Sutton against Arsenal, 105 places above the south London side.

"[The issue] has been very disappointing, there’s no doubt about that,", Sutton's dignified manager Paul Doswell told Sky News. "It’s something that we’ve dealt with quickly as a club. Wayne himself has offered his resignation to the club this afternoon and that has been accepted. It’s a very sad end to what was a very good story."

Inevitably, though, Shaw may yet run out the winner. Despite leaving the job he loved, that had seen him sleep at the ground just to ensure it was ready for the big tie, the supermarket chain Morrisons has apparently offered him a job as a pie taster. "We’re always looking for the best talent to taste our pies and make sure they hit the back of the net," said the supermarket's Chief Pie Buyer, Tessa Callaghan, without any obvious recognition of the crow-barred PR opportunism of it all.

Well, I suppose we Brits love to make capital out of calamity. Our favourite war film is The Great Escape (which, you'll recall, ended with most escapees being recaptured and shot) and its theme tune was adopted to gee up England fans at internationals. And don't forget Gareth Southgate, Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle landed lucrative Pizza Hut commercials for messing up their penalties at Euro '96 and the 1990 World Cup, respectively. Piegate may end well for Wayne Shaw, but at risk of joining the po-faced and joyless who've been scornful of the whole episode, I can't agree more with Doswell that it has taken the shine off the real reason we love watching David/Goliath cup ties. And that has nothing to do with pastry.

Down the tube - the history of rock and pop on TV

It's now just over 61 years since rock and roll - and therefore the beginnings of pop music - made its visual debut. Indeed, rock was still in its infancy when Elvis Presley exploded onto American TV, performing Heartbreak Hotel on CBS's Stage Show in January 1956. Of course, radio had already been established by then, and while video hardly killed the radio star as a result, Presley's hip-swinging, breakthrough appearance set in train a worldwide culture. Television gave a face and a body to the performers who would otherwise only be heard on radio, or pictured in the press or on record covers and, for those lucky enough, made accessible via the stage.

Bill Haley and The Comets predated Presley by performing Rock Around The Clock on The Ed Sullivan Show the previous summer, and some still say that was pop's Big Bang moment. But in the conventional, simplified sequence of musical history, it was Presley's arrival that begat The Beatles, and The Beatles who sparked the rock and pop explosion, which, running the course of the next 40-odd years, brings us to the present day.

One constant through most of this has been the evolution of television. In fact, you could argue that television has had as much of a symbiotic relationship with pop and rock as radio or any other outlet. That certainly is the impression one gets from Rock & Pop On British TV, the tremendous new book by Jeff Evans, which charts the history of music TV in the UK by going right back to the era of stuffy 'light entertainment', when music was anodyne, presenters wore dinner suits and ballgowns, and the teenager was robustly encouraged to be seen but not heard.

Published today - the 60th anniversary of the BBC's seminal Six-Five Special being broadcast for the first time - Rock & Pop On TV delivers a definitive appreciation of how music on British TV grew and has since receded, as well as providing a backdrop to social and cultural changes via shows like Ready Steady Go!, Top Of The Pops, The Old Grey Whistle Test, The Tube, The Word, The White Room and, latterly, the lone survivor - Jools Holland's Later....

While talking about the book at a recent Word In Your Ear Podcast recording, Evans raised the notion that anyone, of any musical generation, will have their 'moment' of music television - be it David Bowie's performance of Starman on TOTP (straining then-contemporary views on sexuality with his arm draped around Mick Ronson) or hoary old Dutch prog rockers Focus yodelling Hocus Pocus on Whistle Test, Frankie Goes To Hollywood's Relax being banned by the BBC in January 1984 and then performed on the TOTP Christmas edition of the same year, right up to more recent times, and Seasick Steve's breakthrough, as a novelty item on the 2006 Hootenanny. We shouldn't forget, either, the moments of notoriety: Bob Geldof's expletive-laden rant during Live Aid, the painful live broadcast of The Brits in 1989 when it just didn't go right for Mick Fleetwood and Sam Fox, and the ludicrous poking-with-a-stick of The Sex Pistols by Bill Grundy on Thames Television's Today show in 1976.

My own memories of music television are as vivid today as anything in my 49 years - be it Alvin Stardust and his somewhat creepy performances, leather jumpsuit-clad with a ring on top of a leather-gloved hand, or actually being a part of the TOTP studio audience as a teenager in the show's relentless, ra-ra skirted, balloon-fest sixth-form disco 1980s era.

Not surprisingly, Evans himself has his own poignant memories: "I do remember very clearly the moment when the UK was introduced to Meat Loaf, via the video shown on the Old Grey Whistle Test. That was what dominated conversation at school the next day. I should also point out that seeing Wizzard perform See My Baby Jive on Lift Off With Ayshea [ITV show which ran from 1969 to 1974] was the moment when I decided to start buying records. I was blown away by the fullness of the sound and the colour of the performance (Roy Wood in all his Technicolor glory and the rest of this huge band larking about behind). That said, some of my very earliest memories are of TV pop shows, because I had an older brother and sister. I don't remember any detail but I recall seeing programmes such as Thank Your Lucky Stars and Discs A Gogo at a very early age."

Without doubt, one show that spans the generations, still, is Top Of The Pops. Running from New Year's Day 1964 until July 2006, and recording weekly audiences in the tens of millions at its peak, it became a national institution which, says Evans, actually made it difficult to kill off. "It was struggling from the 1980s onwards," he says, "and not least because the music video, which had once seemed like a godsend for Top Of The Pops, because it was so handy for covering the absence of artists in the studio, was now available to every other television show. This meant that TOTP was no longer the only programme to cover the latest hits."

When TOTP began in 1964, from a cold, converted church in Manchester, pop was still an unknown beast. By the time it ended, the Internet had arrived, and pop, to some extent, had been and gone as televisual entertainment. "[TOTP] kept going until it really was no longer viable in the age when anyone could access music via the Internet at the press of a button," says Evans. "This longevity was probably due to the efforts of the various producers who were brought in to gee it up and keep it alive. The show was constantly being refreshed and changing its look so these were perhaps little kisses of life but eventually there was no way back. It might have lasted longer, given more goodwill by the BBC hierarchy and better scheduling, but probably not much longer."

Evans does argue, however, that perhaps we place too much significance on the role of shows like TOTP, despite it's perceived cultural importance, and that has some bearing on the absence, today, of the competition of music shows that existed in the '60s, '70s and '80s. "In truth, music shows have never generated huge audiences. TOTP was the one exception, with its viewing figures of around 20 million in the 1970s. This alone is disincentive enough for commercial channels but it also has a bearing at the BBC. It is not so hamstrung by audience figures but it still needs to get justifiable numbers for its programmes."

The arrival, in 1981, of MTV brought about another shift, though not immediately in the UK. Jeff says that this indirectly encouraged record companies to commission more videos which could then be shown across a broad range of entertainment shows. "Music shows then suffered as a result because they lost their USP. Increasingly, you saw broadcasters commissioning live performance shows as a contrast, or recordings of gigs and festivals, but even these have disappeared now."

Indeed, today television has lost its monopoly. "The general dearth of TV music programmes is also no doubt related to the fact that television is just one medium through which you can get your visual music fix these days," says Evans. The novelty of seeing a band 'in the flesh' has worn off in an era when poor quality smartphone footage of a gig is uploaded to YouTube within a matter of minutes of the house lights coming up. Or, worse, being streamed on Periscope.

"It's not just the easy access and the extent of availability, it's also the immediacy," Evans says. "If Rihanna has a new video out, fans are not going to wait a few days to see it on a regular weekly show. They will watch it straight away. In the same way, if there are still chart followers out there, they want the latest information there and then and not have to wait until later in the week for a run down."

Picture: Maidstone Studios

The one beacon in the dark is Holland's Later..., now in its 25th year and as a result, the second-longest music show on British TV after TOTP. "I think it [has lasted] because it is fairly timeless. Unlike Oh Boy!, Ready Steady Go!, The Tube and TFI Friday that flared brightly then burned themselves out, it has never been tied to one musical fad or era. With its broad cross-section of talent, it protects itself from the changing mood of the music buying public. Similarly, there are no gimmicks, which equally date a show. An intelligent editorial approach is also part of the success."

In mentioning Oh Boy!, Evans also raises memories of some of the more obscure pop shows that have come and gone. Who remembers All Systems Freeman!, a single-series 1968 platform for Alan 'Fluff' Freeman?  Or A Whole Scene Going, Rock Goes To College, Poparound (presented by Gary Crowley), Supersonic, and the legendary Cool For Cats, presented by future ITV wrestling commentator Kent Walton? One of the many joys of Evans' book is appreciating just how, for a good 40 years, music was everywhere on British TV - during kids' TV, Saturday mornings, Saturday evenings, weekday lunchtimes and weekday evenings. And it was spread across the channels, especially - and here's one for the teenagers - when television was exclusively terrestrial and, until 1982, comprised of just BBC1, BBC2, and ITV.

Even then, says Evans, there was an editorial difference between the BBC and ITV. "The BBC was still very Reithian [In the 1950s] in its approach to programming, including music programming," he says. "It wasn't just entertainment, it had to educate and inform at the same time, which was why Six-Five Special was no match for Oh Boy! once Jack Good had gone over to ABC. ABC allowed Jack to do his own thing and just go for pure fun."

As '60s beat pop gave way to more 'serious' music, as The Beatles concentrated on the studio and singles gave way to albums, the BBC tried to progress televised pop music with groovy shows like A Whole Scene Going, How It Is and Colour Me Pop. Says Jeff: "Thereafter, ITV always struggled to put together any sort of challenge to Top Of The Pops and Whistle Test, largely because it had problems networking shows. A lot of the music offerings were either designed for children - Granada shows like Lift Off and Get It Together, and therefore not available to the working adult, or they were made regionally and rarely made it beyond their own region, because they couldn't get into that important peak-hour networked period that was dominated by sitcoms, soaps, game shows and variety."

One significant entry in this canon, and which had a peculiar regional bent, was The Tube. Launched in Channel 4's first week, Malcolm Gerrie and his production team challenged the notion that major bands only appeared on TV shows in London, and successfully provided a breakthrough platform for a whole load of acts between 1982 and 1987 from Studio 5 at Tyne Tees Television in Newcastle.

As a fledgling journalist I was lucky enough to visit The Tube a couple of times - the first to interview Jools Holland on his return from suspension (after dropping the F-bomb in a live teatime promo...), and where I was also in a pindrop-silent control room for the world's first playout of U2’s With Or Without You video, heralding The Joshua Tree and the onset of the band as a global rock phenomenon. Gerrie invited me back six weeks later for the show's finale, after Channel 4 pulled the plug on the show after five series and 121 editions due to declining audiences (although the Holland incident didn't help). It was, nonetheless, a brilliant, brave show, providing a robust challenge to the light entertainment pop of Top Of The Pops, the earnest music journalism of Whistle Test and the emerging pervasiveness of the MTV format.

Today, though, apart from the ghoulish spectacles of the talent shows and somewhat incongruous live performances on The Andrew Marr Show or The One Show, fans of live music on TV must rely on Later...  and the annual Glastonbury visit for their fix. Notably, both are on the BBC, the result of the strong music editorial department run by Mark Cooper.

"I think there have been times when music programmes have been important to broadcasters," reflects Evans. "A good example is during the Beatle-inspired beat boom in the early '60s when pop was suddenly infiltrating all kinds of programmes from documentaries to soaps to kids' shows. Generally, because of the audience numbers, I don't think they have always been so important, however, although - of course - broadcasters have (in the past at least) needed to find a broad mix of programming, so music shows helped with that."

That repeats on BBC Four of vintage Top Of The Pops episodes generate huge - and often ironic - traffic on Twitter is a reflection of the unique shared TV experience of at least a two or three generations. "I'm sure TOTP has been missed," says Evans, "but probably only by some of its former audience, and in a nostalgic sense. I can't imagine today's teenagers, never having seen it except at Christmas, would consider it a huge miss, when they have so many options for accessing music. TOTP also belonged to an era when people watched television together. We had only three or four channels and there was no Internet. That collective experience – shared at a given time every week – has also gone."

A shame, perhaps, but for those who love music, and love seeing music, you could argue that the alternatives - the video streaming services in particular - do still do the job. But as Rock & Pop On British TV consistently reminds, there can never again be a first time for seeing The Beatles, or Bowie strumming his 12-string to Queen Bitch on Whistle Test, or Oasis making its snarling debut on The Word, and such events being the talk of the classroom the next day. Perhaps it doesn't matter, but for this music head, recalling the childhood joys of Sweet or Suzi Quatro or Slade, or finally 'getting' Britpop thanks to TFI Friday and Chris Evans' infectious zeitgeist consumption, there still is a place for an iconic 'appointment' music show on British TV today.

Alternative truths: Elbow - Little Fictions

As I plummet towards my 50th year on this rock I can, like many my age, be prone to rose-tinted, nostalgic visits to childhood. One strong reminiscence is that of the dozy, cosy feeling on a Sunday afternoon just after lunch. In my house, that would have involved the requisite roast, accompanied by one of my dad's tapes of The Goon Show or Hancock's Half Hour (let me emphasise - these were recordings, I'm not that old...).

Afterwards, as the washing up began, the radio would come on, and the house would semi-slumber to something bucolic on Radio 2 (if memory serves me well, 'Cheerful' Charlie Chester's Sunday Soapbox ("With a box full of records and a bag full of post, it's radio Soapbox and Charlie your host!") followed by the Mike Sammes Singers and Sing Something Simple, before a polite request would be issued to turn to Radio 1 and the Top 40.

I'm reminded of this today when I listen to Guy Garvey's Finest Hour on BBC 6 Music. Not that the Elbow frontman fills his 60 minutes of airtime with whimsy and pre-pop easy listening. Far from it. It's just that Garvey's perfectly curated selections always hit the spot on a Sunday afternoon, especially when coupled with his mellifluous Mancunian tones. You could say the Garvey oeuvre is a warming, welcoming hearth.

Elbow aren't, of course, just Garvey, but the big man's inherent and endearing warmth is a key component of the total band effort. That band is now one less, following the departure of drummer Richard Jupp, but you could even say that, after more than a quarter of a century in business, they are still just hitting their stride. Yes, I know they've had soaring, life-affirming, anthemic hits, but Little Fictions is the album - and still only their seventh - where you feel that Elbow are fully comfortable in their skins.

For Garvey, personally, his own journey is reflected on this record: since Elbow's last (2014's The Take Off and Landing of Everything) he has ended one marriage and commenced another, and released a jazz-ish solo album, Courting The Squall, which appeared to address much of the turmoil of such events. Thus, one is immediately hit by a feeling of wellbeing from the outset of Little Fictions, with Magnificent (She Says) striking a keynote of upbeat goodness as it celebrates togetherness through a narrative of parental pride, "...my heart, there defrosting in a gaze". It sounds saccharine, but here is Elbow's magic - they can do this sort of thing without resorting to cheese or, worse, Coldplayesque bombast. Thus, the lovely Gentle Storm, with its understated chords, Casio keyboard percussion, and the unashamed, plaintive refrain "Fall in love with me - every day", is much, much better to hear than my wretched description is to read.

Later, even tackling post-Brexit national isolation on K2 ("I’m from a land with an island status. Makes us think everyone hates us.") and taking a swipe at Fleet Street there is a reflective warmth, rather than an acerbic froideur. But don't be fooled into thinking this is all down to Garvey: this album was a group effort, largely constructed in open writing sessions up in Scotland. That said, Garvey's fingerprints smudge heavily on the adorable Kindling, which closes the album, and which opens with rhythmic, Velvet Underground-like circularity and the painful confessional "Had a circular saw blade where I should have had a heart. I was trusted, I adored her. And I tore it all apart." This is, however, a rare moment of darkness on the album.

Scotland's role not withstanding, there is something intrinsically - if hard to fully pin down - redolent of northern England on this record. That may come from the dramatic, reverb-enhanced sound that has been the hallmark of Elbow's sound as well as that of peers and local friends Doves and I An Kloot. It's their native Greater Manchester, as if the wet, echoey, melancholia of cobbled northern streets has been sampled and programmed into the mixing desk settings of these bands' studios. This is, though, only an effect, as the overall 48-minute collection is one of eminently pleasing comfort, ideal for these troubled times.

Other influences are brought to bear: Firebrand & Angel chugs along delightfully with piano bass notes reminiscent of Talk Talk, whose more obscure songs are regular features of Garvey's 6 Music show. That same piano emerges of the tender Trust The Sun, another example of carefully weighted minimalism laying beneath more gooeyness as Garvey declares "I just don't trust the sun to rise when I can't see your eyes. You're my reason for breathing". The Velvet Underground return in spirit on All Disco, but not with their customary bleakness - here, in a more understated form, is the cigarette lighters-ahoy uplift of One Day Like This, but instead of a song about embracing the new, it's one of embracing reality, textured by Mark Potter's graceful, well chosen guitar notes. These are also a defining characteristic of Head For Supplies, which alternates between Potter's haunting strings and some wonderful choral arrangements.

Elbow might have been attached to the belief that they are purely a stadium band, despite the "alternative" tag. One Day Like This did that in one fell swoop. But in trying to dispel such thinking, one, single song on Little Fictions - Montparnasse - is all you would need to think differently. With its caustically stripped back approach, it is a magnificent, beautiful, even, piece of songwriting. Like a considered Miles Davis pause, or a single, ringing BB King note, it applies thoughtful minimalism to produce just enough fabric to hold together a declaration of love that, like so much of this album, is heartfelt, genuine and not a bit soppy.

It's always easy to declare a band's latest album their best, until you play it back in comparison with the previous work. But even given the general brilliance of Little Fictions' six predecessors, it's hard not to consider this Elbow's best yet but perhaps, though, for reasons you wouldn't have expected to appreciate.