.Loud as I cheered for Theo Walcott’s England hat-trick last night in Croatia, I cheered even louder when Jools Holland announced on Tuesday night that the Bury quintet had scooped the biggest prize in British music for their album The Seldom Seen Kid.
It seemed in the build-up that everyone promoting the event considered Elbow to be also-rans. “Among the favourites are Estelle, Last Shadow Puppets, and Burial”, they would say. “Nominees include British Sea Power, Radiohead and Portico Quartet.” But rarely a mention of Elbow. Well I hope their faces are red now.
I am writing this article as a pure, unadulterated, and entirely unashamed piece of publicity for the band I call my “favourite band of all time”; an accolade I only award with the due thought and consideration it deserves. And I shall say this: if you haven’t heard Elbow’s music or, more horrifyingly, haven’t heard of Elbow full-stop, make it your autumnal resolution to familiarise yourself with them as soon as possible.
The music Elbow make is quite simply, and at times quite literally, breathtaking. The tenderness, delicacy and sheer sumptuous richness of their songs sets them apart, I think, from any other band around.
One song, Great Expectations, weaves the image of a wedding, somewhere between metaphor and reality, taking place late at night on a bus through town. “A call girl with yesterday-eyes was our witness and priest. Stockport supporters’ club kindly supplied us a choir. Your veil was your smile as we moved down the aisle of the last bus home…”
In another song, the incomparably beautiful Scattered Black And Whites, the singer remembers his grandfather, whose tales “flit between short trousers and a full dress uniform”. The lyrics later explain that: “My sister buzzes through the room leaving perfume in the air, that’s what triggered this”.
The lead singer of Elbow is Guy Garvey whose voice is the most mournful and touching in rock. His choirboy tones are toughened with a gravelly razor-edge, which make his flights into the doleful upper ranges seem to both soar and sear.
There are few drummers in indie (maybe only Bloc Party’s Matt Tong) who can hold a candle to Richard Jupp for striking up fantastically unusual and mesmerising rhythms; the guitar of Mark Potter has a Coldplay-esque simplicity and perfection; while Craig Potter on keyboards and Pete Turner on bass create mesmerising and hypnotic melodies and harmonies that fly behind.
Many of their songs take off and soar and swell, as piano riffs and string interludes cascade in and around insistent beats and rolling rhythms. Whenever one of those trademark Elbow tracks comes up in my earphones on the way to work, it makes me catch my breath and want to plug it into the tannoy so that everyone in the tube carriage can listen.
But this isn’t the only music Elbow makes. In among beautifully crafted songs, each of their four albums boasts at least one great, un-ignorable, stonking rock song. Led Zeppelin would be proud of tracks like Leaders Of The Free World and Grounds For Divorce, which launch into driving, aggressive, menacing guitar intros which get the head banging and the feet tapping. Many a festival crowd (including yours truly) have moshed along to these grand-scale songs, more suited to a stadium than all the Bon Jovis in the world.
But again, that’s not all. So many tracks on their albums are surprise packages. One Day Like This is itself a wonder of a stadium-track, but is an upbeat, life-affirming, mass-singalong epic backed by tumbling violins and mesmeric choruses. Station Approach builds from a thoughtful ode into an almost drum-and-bass-meets-rock-and-roll fury.
That Elbow have never been chart-topping smash-hitters remains a mystery to most within the industry. There is something so charming about Elbow’s lack of commercial drive. Their mass-marketing publicity campaigns are beautifully conspicuous by their absence.
Most bands, you see, sell an image with their music. Blur versus Oasis was the Mods versus Rockers of the 90s. Oasis were the choice of the lads down the pub – hard nuts in stonewashed jeans. Blur were the choice of the studenty lefty cosmopolitan types. The Libertines sold an image of dishevelled chaos and skinny-jean chic. Jay-Z, a very pleasant and quietly-spoken man named Shawn, sells an image of b*tches and caps popped in asses.
But Elbow just sell their music, which is brilliant enough to stand on its own without needing a garb of “image” to package it in. As a result, few number ones or Brit awards have come their way over their many years together, but this is a gross injustice to the music they create.
Colin Murray of Radio 1 summed it up fantastically
when he wrote:“Tonight was the night when the people's favourite became the top dog. The 2008 Nationwide Mercury Prize was won by Elbow, for their album The Seldom Seen Kid. It's the first truly global recognition for a band who have spent 17 years filling our ears with tunes that swing from searing swells to hopeless delicacy. Together, their consistency of song-writing often reaches levels that few can hold a candle to.”
The title of their Mercury Prize-winning album comes from the track Grounds For Divorce, when Garvey sings the catchy hook of "Someday we'll be drinking to the seldom seen kid". How right he was.
I will admit, quite happily and very proudly, that I am not an entirely disinterested party, because I was lucky enough to sing with Elbow at the Royal Festival Hall this summer in a gig I shall never forget and will certainly never top. The experience of working with Garvey and co, the nicest bunch of guys you could ever meet (as their quietly charming modesty on Tuesday night proved) was superb, and certainly inspired me to further pursue my own musical ambitions. I was also, among tens of thousands of others, in the video for Leaders Of The Free World, which they filmed at the Reading Festival some years back.
But all bias aside, lyrically there isn’t a band around, even in the current pantheon of ambitious and successful British indie, fit to shine Elbow’s shoes, and to combine this with a beauty and style of performance and production is a rarity these days.
Quite simply (and as you may have noticed) I cannot praise this band highly enough, and cannot encourage you in any stronger terms to get their albums and delve into the totally superb world of Elbow. Start with the song Grounds For Divorce, below, and go from there.
Enjoy.
You will.
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