Make some Elbow room

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There is justice in the world. A sweet, harmonious, heartachingly beautiful justice. Because Elbow won the Mercury Prize.

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.

Two pints of lager and a match of tennis

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It was gone midnight. An awed hush filled the pub. The bar had stopped serving, but the few dozen punters remained, eyes glued to the screen.

But they were not watching a lacklustre England football team or an insignificant Premier League clash. They were watching tennis.

The greatest accolade the surly Andy Murray can take from this past fortnight is to have turfed the British sporting faithful out on a Monday night. At 10pm. To watch tennis. And not even Wimbledon, but the US Open.

Last night, the Larrick in North London was a pub full of people who, you could tell, were not entirely sure exactly how to go about watching tennis in a pub. With football matches, everyone is used to shouting useless platitudes like “Go on, my son!” while waving pints angrily at faded big-screens and jeering at inept referees. But with tennis? No-one was sure.

A quiet fell with the start of each new point, as if our chattering might disturb the players. When Murray won a game, a great cheer went up, but does one cheer when he is 0-40 down and wins one point back?

Tennis is like a closet obsession in this country. Everyone goes bananas for two weeks during Wimbledon every summer, but shows no flicker of interest as the Australian, French and US Opens go by, largely unnoticed, through the rest of the year.

Tennis courts are packed with enthusiastic amateurs during Wimbledon fortnight, but for the other 50 weeks the courts are deserted, even on the sunniest Saturdays and most blistering bank holidays. Everybody owns a tennis racket, it seems, but has forgotten whether it is in the back of the wardrobe or in the attic under the deck-chairs.

So to be in a North London pub on a distinctly Septemberish Monday night watching the US Open final was quite an experience. To have a British finalist, the first in 11 years, was also an experience. And, sure enough, the whole evening turned out to be a very typically British sporting experience.

An overdose of hope

It’s the hope that’s the worst. Everyone knew that Roger Federer would be a bridge too far for Murray. We all knew it would be a bit too much to ask for Andy to beat the greatest player to ever raise a racket. But we saw him beat Nadal. And Nadal beat Federer. Therefore… Uh oh. There’s the hope kicking in.

Tim Henman did it to us year after year after year. People who would never call themselves tennis fans can remember screaming at their televisions as Tim valiantly fought, and lost, against Sampras, Hewitt, and Ivanisevic. Oh, Ivanisevic. In among the England penalty shoot-outs and Ashes collapses, there will always be that five-set 2001 semi-final, that Henman fight-back, that infernal rain-break, and that familiar heartbreak.

Yet Andy Murray has done what Henman never could: reach a Grand Slam final. And he’s only 21. Surely that bodes well. Both Federer and Nadal are predicting great things for the mercurial, bumfluffed lad.

But let’s not get carried away. If there’s one thing the British sporting press is wonderful at, it is building people up to knock them down. It is never one step at a time, but eight at once. Murray reaches his first Grand Slam final, and suddenly there’s talk of him being one of the greats, of him remaining at the top of the game for years. Poor old Fred Perry’s ghost is given another jab in the ribs. 1936 has become the 1966 of tennis.

A loveable grouch?

Towards the end of last night’s final, the atmosphere in the pub grew quite jovial. The cheers became rather more ironic as hope was replaced by realism as we watched Federer’s masterclass. One Wimbledon defeat and the “best player ever” had suddenly become “faded” and “jaded” and “on the way out”? Nonsense.

The hope didn’t die until that final Murray shot crashed into the net, however. Even at 0-5 in the third set, Murray’s last-gasp break of serve got the ridiculous among us excited again, albeit fleetingly.

But it's an ill wind. At least we got to bed on time. It would have been somehow worse to have sat up until three in the morning just to watch Murray lose in five sets and then feel like death in the morning to boot. And at least no-one in the crowd shouted "Come on, Tim!" this time. Hilarious jokers though they are.

You see, Andy Murray excites a different range of emotions from Tim Henman. It was easy to support Henman: the way he punched the air in that awfully middle-class way, with his clip-on hair and squeaky-cleanliness.

Murray is more of a dilemma. He is moody and grouchy and petulant. He growls unpleasantly from beneath his cap and hides behind his patchy adolescent beard. He mumbles his way through press conferences and greets each point won with a feral snarl.

But that’s all so brilliant. The British love something to complain about. They hated Henman for being so reserved and they hate Murray for being too fiery. Or for being anti-English. Or for wearing a hat. Or for…oh shut up. Just watch the tennis, will you?

If you want to hate something, hate Roger Federer. Hate his success. Hate his stupid floppy hair. Hate his inscrutable robot face and, especially, hate that horrible way he falls to the floor on Championship Point every bloody time. He clearly rehearses that in his bedroom. The bastard.

It’s all sour grapes of course, but then the British have rather a taste for those too. Americans crowds will always cheer on the favourite, as they did last night, but the British will cheer the plucky underdog every time. Handily, most British sportsmen and women are, generally, also plucky underdogs, so there’s no conflict of interest.

The end of the world will come when Murray suddenly becomes the Wimbledon favourite and Roger Federer the underdog, at which point a black hole will open over SW19 and suck us all to our inevitable doom.

Until then, however, let’s just see what Andy Murray can do in the Australian and the French, before getting hopelessly carried away on the Wimbledon lawns in nine months’ time.

Brace yourselves.


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ps: this article conclusively proves that it is possible to write about Andy Murray without mentioning his Caledonian country of birth. You know. Scotland. Oh drat.
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