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.
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