Good Evening, Hammersmith!

“It’s great to be here! It’s great to be anywhere!” is Keith Richards' customary wry introduction to Happy, the single song he gets to front at Rolling Stones gigs. It’s the phrase that entered my mind as soon as we exited the Tube station and saw people thronging to the grand old theatre that I still regard as the Hammersmith Odeon, but now goes by the commercial name Eventim Apollo (and, convolutedly, at various times in its 90-year history, the Gaumont Palace, Labatt’s Apollo, Hammersmith Apollo, Carling Apollo Hammersmith and the HMV Hammersmith Apollo). Because it was great to be out, for one, but also great to be at a gig again, my first since...God knows when. Actually, I can tell you: December 2019. Presumably, then, no one outside Wuhan had heard of  “the thing”, as Guy Garvey refers obliquely to it, drawing attention to the fact that, for the vast majority of the three-and-a-half thousand punters assembled for Elbow’s repeatedly-postponed return to the Hammersmith [Insert Name Here], this will be a unique occasion.

“Sorry we’re late,” he quips, once headline proceedings have commenced (as he probably begins every night of a tour already into its final third). He likes to get underway with an audience-softening zinger, and has used this gag before, but tonight there’s an obvious poignancy to it. Like every other UK venue Elbow are appearing at, the audience is tentative, cautiously stepping into the concert experience and its traditions with the added reserve of not fully knowing what the etiquette is - mask on or off? 

It is, for many, a first night out in months, with habitual gig-goers having to juggle suddenly clashing shows, with rescheduled dates appearing on calendars like planes in a holding pattern for Heathrow. Before Elbow take to the stage there is polite observance for the support, the Suzanne Vega-ish American, Jessica Hoop, followed by Peter Alexander Jobson of longstanding Elbow mates and fellow Lancastrians, I Am Kloot. Jobson is as jocular as Hoop is winsome, but it serves the correct purpose of a support set in these times to ease the audience into the gig experience once more. Even then, Elbow’s launching into Dexter + Sinister, from 2019’s Giants Of All Sizes, comes as an assault on the eyes as much as the ears, with bright, white staccato strobes pulsing, piercingly, shocking sensorial systems belonging to human pit ponies that have spent the better part of the last 18 months hunched over laptops and smartphones in the permanent half-light of WFH.

It is the start of a two-hour reminder that Elbow are one of the UK’s best live acts, but while they are clearly comfortable in the grand, but modestly-sized interior of the Apollo (a venue they have appeared at on many occasions), you are, very early, reminded of their appeal - the “soaring” anthems that have become associated with the warmth and wide-open communal singing of outdoor summer festivals, rather than a Depression-era cinema next to the M4 flyover in West London. 

Garvey is the focal point, but he performs with an avuncularity that is a rarity in rock, not consciously trying to outshine his bandmates, but applying his cuddly bear-like frame and warm humour, to immediately bring the crowd onside. He projects an everyman charm, the loveable mate you’d be just as happy in the company of down the pub as in front of you on stage. It’s an engaging nature that comes across regardless of whether he’s addressing a radio audience, guest starring in Peter Kay’s Car Share, or performing before tens of thousands at Pilton Farm. He is, obviously, Elbow’s vocal representation, but more than just its singer and co-songwriter, he maintains the geniality of a band that produces compelling heartfelt songs without the aggravating pretentiousness of Coldplay, a quartet of similar length of service (“We've been going almost 30 years,” Garvey declares to gasps).

There is, too, a distinctive northerness to Elbow’s music. It’s hard to properly describe, but it’s a north-western ambience accentuated by Garvey’s drawling Bury vowels, unsullied by life outside the region. Theirs is also a music that defies definition, which probably puts them in the “prog” category (Garvey is a noted fan of Peter Gabriel, and Elbow’s first album was cut at Gabriel’s Real World Studios), which is fine by me. You do, though, hear strains of other, equally indefinable influences, like Talk Talk and even the Velvet Underground (especially on Kindling, which appears midway through the set). Because, as these two hours in Hammersmith demonstrate, there’s an intricacy and complexity to Elbow’s music and lyrics, but also a hymn-like quality. Barely a song can’t be described as “anthemic”, a cliché I know, but this is why Elbow are so intrinsically suited to the open space of the festival. Here, you also acknowledge just how good Garvey’s voice is, always at the top of expellation without ever sounding strained. Their songs might bear a lyrical intricacy but the instrumentation of guitarist Mark Potter and his keyboard-playing brother Craig, along with bassist Pete Turner and touring drummer Alex Reeves, plus a couple of strings players (and, I should add, a stageside signer for the hearing impaired, Katie Fenwick - a first for me at a gig - who, to her credit, had learned the lyrics of all three acts) spreads economically across the scope of the band’s often emotionally wrought songs.

Alas, Katie was too far from my Row U eyrie to be of any benefit in articulating Garvey’s wonderfully poetic lyrics, but there was so much more going on in a 17-song set drawn from seven of Elbow’s eight albums released to date, plus the ‘bonus’ of the delightful What I Am Without You, a fairground Wurtlitzer joy of a number, reminiscent in places of Clive Dunn’s Grandad (and from the forthcoming ninth album Flying Dream 1), which was sandwiched by one of their earliest, The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver, and most recent, White Noise White Heat. There were the obligatory singalongs, an inescapable aspect of an Elbow show, starting early with Mirrorball, along with the arm-sailing Magnificent (She Says) and Grounds For Divorce (with Garvey orchestrating a three-part crowd harmony as warm-up to the song's “wooah-woah” chorus), all leading up to the festival behemoth that is One Day Like This. It is, always has, and forever will be a communal pile-in event in its own right, and even if you don’t know all the words, it’s impossible - even for the most ingrained curmudgeon - not to participate. One Day is one of those songs that other acts must be truly envious of, such is its emphatic closing-number nature, but it provides not only the show’s conclusion, but a final paragraph on the nature of the Elbow canon. The strings, too, made me wonder that it must surely only be a matter of time before Garvey & Co get the nod from the Bond producers to produce a theme.

The term ‘emotional’ when applied to pop music can often mean durge or, at risk of enraging those who feel otherwise, Adele’s first couple of albums, at least. Elbow transcend that with intelligence and music that commands the ear, all wrapped in the pleasing personality that is the easy-going frontman, so lacking in commonly-found rock star traits. As a return to gigging goes, we probably couldn't have done any better.

Doves on day release

Picture: Ceri Levi

A flurry of gigs last year - including one at the Royal Albert Hall in April that I was at - gave hope of new material from the mighty Doves, after a 11-year break since their 2009 album Kingdom Of Rust. During that absence, brothers Andy and Jez Williams formed Black Rivers, while bassist and singer Jimi Goodwin released a solo album. But last year's live reformation seemed to galvanise the Oldham trio into getting back together on record, and thus it seemed to be the case in January when a tweet from a studio mixing desk appeared to confirm that new material would be in the offing.

Last month saw the release of the single Carousels, serving a taste of today's announcement of a new album, The Universal Want, to be released on 11 September, which will include the sprightly second single, Prisoners, issued today. "Everything on the album is an echo," Williams, J. said today. "It’s an echo of what we were going through at the time. Getting back together, the Royal Albert Hall and everything else."

Elbow's Guy Garvey - who, along with Doves and I Am Kloot - forms part of a north-west English clique responsible for some of the richest indie rock of the last decade or so - recently gave Q an insight into what he'd heard coming out of the Doves studio: "You don't hear records like they're about to make very often any more," he said, making clear he'd been sworn to secrecy. "The necessary economy of making music means it can be sparse and there's fewer signals per tune and that forced minimalism is turning out some amazing stuff," adding, "but sometimes you want something with the kitchen sink being swung around the head. It's gonna be massive."

Picture: Doves/Jon Shard

Back in June, when the first single was released, Goodwin told the NME of the new direction: "We’re still really excited about trying stuff that we’ve never done and going to places that we as a band have never been to." Carousels, he said, was "a good harbinger of the album and just a great mission statement. Without having any agenda or a backstory as to what the record is, it just shows off our love of sonic weirdness, atmosphere and energy. We unanimously knew that this would be great as the first thing that people hear of us coming out of the gate after all this time. It’s a mission statement."

As for returning after such a long break, Goodwin added: "We find ourselves in the middle of such strange world events. It’s still exciting to be releasing music, because I’m dead proud of what we’ve managed to pull together after 11 years." Speaking about the new album, Goodwin said: "I just know that we’ve made a really good Doves record that represents where we are and where we’ve been for the past 11 years. It’s probably the most organically-made Doves record," adding that it came out of the trio chatting via e-mail. "I was meant to be doing my next solo record and they were supposed to be doing a new Black Rivers album. We started pooling all our material and the material that we couldn’t work into shape on the last record Kingdom Of Rust."

As for the hiatus, Goodwin told the NME: "Time really does fly and I can’t believe it’s been 11 years. We’re friends at the end of the day, and we just clicked back into place like it was yesterday. It’s nice to have had that space between the records. It was starting to feel like punching the clock a little bit before we took a break."

The Universal Want tracklisting:
Carousels
I Will Not Hide
Broken Eyes
For Tomorrow
Cathedrals Of The Mind
Prisoners
Cycle Of Hurt
Mother Silver Lake
Universal Want
Forest House

Size doesn't matter: Elbow's Giants Of All Sizes

With time on my hands, I've taken to perusing Elbow's press coverage on the occasion of their eighth and latest album, Giants Of All Sizes, finding its way into the world. And so, a casual Google galavant reveals a predilection for journalists to make reference to Guy Garvey's avuncular nature. "Cuddly", is an oft-repeated description, along with "bear-like", which all border on sizeist judgement of the bearded 45-year-old from Bury. Quite what Craig Potter, his brother Mark, and Pete Turner, the band's other members, feel about this is not known, but it's common for a band with a charismatic lead singer and chief lyricist, to attract most, if not all, of the attention. Peter Gabriel (one of Garvey's musical idols) built up similar internal resentment when lead singer of Genesis, to such extent that Phil Collins has been quoted as saying that they were in danger of being known as "Peter Gabriel and Genesis".

Why this is relevant is that despite Garvey's apparent ursine appeal, Elbow's eighth and latest album, Giants Of All Sizes is, according to the band, anything but cuddly. "It's certainly not an uplifting album," Garvey recently told a journalist, explaining that the band wanted to make an album reflective of both their mood, as well as the mood of the times. That doesn't mean a lot of ambient Thom Yorke-style droning in a minor key, however: at essence, Giants is still an Elbow album, with the warmth of Garvey's voice binding a band comfortable in its own musical skin, experimenting with sounds and instrumentation without going too far, mood without being too Enoesque. But within that experimentation and instrumentation there is certainly a darker tonality, even from the off, with opener Dexter & Sinister and its disjointed time signatures and non sequitur breaks addressing a number of things on Garvey's mind, from Brexit to bereavement (including the death of his father) and, in his own words, "the general sense of disaffection you see all-around at the moment". The track rings the keynote for the rest of the album, one which draws on a certain Lancastrian bleakness that has run through all their work, as it does with their great mates Doves and I Am Kloot. That's not a lazy southern trope, but think about it. I've never been entirely sure whether it is to do with geography, like the rain-soaked cobbles of Coronation Street, or something else, but it's there in almost everything coming out of the north-west, The Beatles' childlike acts of whimsy notwithstanding.

Musically, some might find Giants musically narrow, nine songs with a very similar range and notably lacking in the sort of anthemic bluster that made the nation fall in love with them via the album Seldom Seen Kid and their closing ceremony performance at the London Olympics in 2012, where One Day Like This seemed to supplant Land Of Hope And Glory in the nation's communal singing preferences. Frankly, though, this lack of width makes for a better album, one which accentuates the combination of Garvey's voice with Turner's at times McCartneyesque bass, Potter (C)'s keyboard washes and Potter (M)'s understated guitar work. Despite being more compressed and lyrically reflective than either Build A Rocket Boys! or The Take Off And Landing Of Everything, Elbow's last de facto albums, Giants is nonetheless immediately accessible, even when tackling some of its weightier subjects, such as the undertone of Brexit in Empires, with its fairground Wurlitzer stabs part of a layered fabric interwoven with such existential questions as "How can a bland unremarkable typical Tuesday be Day of the Dead?".  Others, like The Delayed 3.15, with its string section find melodic companionship with some of the less bonkers elements of prog rock, a musical genre often misunderstood and invariably mocked, but which had more in common with jazz as anything else. Doldrums even points back to prog's true origins, with a decidedly Beatles-like groove and Garvey's vocal treble-tracked to the extent it sounds like they were recorded in a broom cupboard. As a result, it's a track that, strangely enough, benefits from being listened to on headphones. The band's assertion that this is a bleak album is a bit of a misnomer, but paying close attention to the lyrics throughout reveals the true state of Garvey's mind. White Noise White Heat, for example, provides a stark reflection on the nightmare of Grenfell Tower and the injustices handed down to its victims, wrenching the song's emotional heft further with strings and brass. It is, perhaps, the closest Giants gets to a "soaring"™anthem like One Day Like This, should that be what you'd buy an Elbow album for.

If I might return to Garvey's avunicularity, it stems from his voice. With his Bury accent heavily inflected in the delivery, each song rings with autumnal comfort, no more so than the beautiful My Trouble, with the vocal perfectly mixed over a combination of bass, strings and the subtlest of drum machine rhythm tracks, building to a hymn-like chorus of "Come get me/Guide and check me/Sail and wreck me/Soak me to my skin." I defy anyone not to sing along at the top of their voice while driving along to it.

At the arrival of On Deronda Road, the penultimate song, I reached the point where I realised why I find Giants Of All Sizes so accessible. It's not because this particular song is notably catchy, there are no obvious hit-making hooks, and in some respects it's a somewhat brief interlude. No, it's the realisation that I'm listening to something from Trick Of The Tail-era Genesis. Now, don't baulk at that suggestion (trust me, naysayers, it's a quality album), but the vocal harmonies and textures hark back to that 1976 album's most beautiful moments, in particular, Steve Hackett and Mike Rutherford's 12-string guitars producing something ethereal on songs like Entangled and Ripples. In fact, this vibe continues with the closing track of Giants, Weightless, which takes inspiration from both the death of Garvey's father and the continuation of life with the birth of his son. It is a truly beautiful song and easily one of the best Elbow have committed over the course of their eight albums. Whether by design of sequencing or simply the way it fell out of the writing process, Weightless concludes an album written around gloomier themes with a sense of uplift, of hope and admission that, maybe, the world isn't all bad. Or, perhaps, Garvey is driving at a bleak future for his offspring. Either way, it's a song of balanced grace.

When not making Guy Garvey out to be some sort of Lancastrian Yogi Bear, media reaction to Giants Of All Sizes has been a little mixed. Some reviewers have (quite rightly) claimed it to be Elbow's best yet, while others are still just not sure. My view is that it is brilliantly intriguing, musically, and obliquely reflective, lyrically. If this is a key test to go by, I listened to it on repeat for most of Saturday afternoon, hearing something new each time, pulling it closer like a warm blanket on a cold, wet October afternoon, a comfort no Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks will ever fulfil.

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.