Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
4 stars
It was Elbow singer Guy Garvey’s 35th birthday yesterday, and last night he had every reason to look happy. Because when his band won the 2008 Mercury Music Prize for their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, there were grumblings that this was merely a long service award for yet another old-fashioned guitar band. Elbow’s further success at the Brits and the NME Awards, however, looks more like vindication for a canon of heart-on-sleeve northern English grimoirs that are sonically way more adventurous than Elbow’s traditional rock band set-up suggests.
As the curtain opens on a giant Rubik’s cube backdrop taken from the album cover, all five band-members line up at the front of the stage, trumpets in hand, fanfaring in the declaration of love that is album opener Starlings, while a string quartet double up as a choir behind them. Out-with the music, though, that’s about as serious as Elbow get. Garvey has the demeanour of a northern club turn, one minute getting the audience to sing him happy birthday or praising his sister, the next telling tall tales about Oban B&Bs and David Gray.
In-between are a series of down-to-earth confessionals and meat-and-two-veg pop epics for grown-ups that sound grandiose and redemptive without any of Coldplay’s pompous whine. Even as the band’s campfire huddle for Weather To Fly is interrupted by an onstage birthday treat, it’s the love songs that stand out. Newborn builds from an acoustic lament to something monumental. One Day Like This is even better. This song is that rarest of things, an anthem about a perfect moment of domestic bliss. By the time Garvey fires silver streamers into the crowd, it’s become an affirmation of joy and life itself.
The Herald, March 7th 2009
ends
4 stars
It was Elbow singer Guy Garvey’s 35th birthday yesterday, and last night he had every reason to look happy. Because when his band won the 2008 Mercury Music Prize for their fourth album, The Seldom Seen Kid, there were grumblings that this was merely a long service award for yet another old-fashioned guitar band. Elbow’s further success at the Brits and the NME Awards, however, looks more like vindication for a canon of heart-on-sleeve northern English grimoirs that are sonically way more adventurous than Elbow’s traditional rock band set-up suggests.
As the curtain opens on a giant Rubik’s cube backdrop taken from the album cover, all five band-members line up at the front of the stage, trumpets in hand, fanfaring in the declaration of love that is album opener Starlings, while a string quartet double up as a choir behind them. Out-with the music, though, that’s about as serious as Elbow get. Garvey has the demeanour of a northern club turn, one minute getting the audience to sing him happy birthday or praising his sister, the next telling tall tales about Oban B&Bs and David Gray.
In-between are a series of down-to-earth confessionals and meat-and-two-veg pop epics for grown-ups that sound grandiose and redemptive without any of Coldplay’s pompous whine. Even as the band’s campfire huddle for Weather To Fly is interrupted by an onstage birthday treat, it’s the love songs that stand out. Newborn builds from an acoustic lament to something monumental. One Day Like This is even better. This song is that rarest of things, an anthem about a perfect moment of domestic bliss. By the time Garvey fires silver streamers into the crowd, it’s become an affirmation of joy and life itself.
The Herald, March 7th 2009
ends
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