A Carly Review of Elbow

Elbow with support from Mew, Britxon Academy, Friday November 25th 2005

Elbow are band I had heard of in New Zealand (many thanks to Nicola!!) but with no radio play anywhere all I had to go on was a couple of reviews in the NZ Herald and a manky bit of paper glued to the counter of ECM..... so to cut a long story short I hadn't actually heard any of their music until arriving in the UK. But with much more airplay over here, the release of their third album- Leaders of the Free World- (with one of the standout singles I have heard thus far this year, Forget Myself) and sneakily being able to rip off all of their three albums Asleep in Black (nominated for the Mercury Prize), Cast of Thousands and the recent Leaders of the Free World courtesy of housemate Richard and his friend from work Mick I decided I rather liked these fellas.

And so it was that found myself on the tube on a Friday night after work heading to the famous Brixton Academy in freezing 2 degree conditions to check them out-( all on a sort of spur-of-the moment as Rich and I had only decided to go on the Wednesday).

The Brixton Academy itself is a very very cool venue- and quite hard to explain really- it reminds me of the St James in Auckland but perhaps on a more lavish scale perhaps? The only down-side was the completely useless bar staff who made me miss the the opening track because they were so slow (I ended up pouring half the drinks).

And so the gig began with (shock! awe!) a decent opening band called Mew who were absolutely brilliant in comparison to the woeful Son of Dave (Supergrass) and some PJ Harvey wannabe (Turin Brakes). And as a bonus some dude was giving out free demo tracks so that was good- free stuff yay!!

Elbow finally arrived and got stuck into the very excellent first track off their latest album Station Approach which I had the unfortunate pleasure of missing (refer to useless bar staff paragraph) but it pretty much set the scene for what would end up being one of the best live gigs I have seen in a very very long time............

I can't single out one factor as to why it was so good- there was lead singer Guy Garveys stunning voice, and excellent rapour with the audience- everything about him was so engaging which made the concert feel somewhat intimate eventhough id say there were at least 4 thousand people attending. Not to mention the fact he is a comic genious which I will elborate on shortly.... whether it was the venue or the 110% effort the band put into performing I don't know I just can't quite explain it- but I pretty much left thinking that perhaps I have just seen once of the best live bands in Britain at present (not that I have seen that many.....) oh well..

So onto Guy Garvey, the lead singer- what a man! Firstly his stage presence his somehow enhanced by the presence of a walking stick in his hand- due to being drunk at their Dublin gig and falling down the stairs (apparently he sat on a chair for the whole gig.) He defintatly worked it anyway- singing to it during Puncture Repair (the opening line is 'I leaned on you today'...) and pointing to the audience during Forgt Myself. This guy is seriously a comic genius and I hadn't seen a lead singer engage and talk to the audience like Garvey in a long long time. He told a funny joke (taking the piss out of a sign he saw in an outdoor clothing shop saying 'this is the winter of your discount tent...), he made rabbit ears behind his head when his head created a shiloutte on the wall, he made everyone sing happy birthday to his brother in the crowd. And he was clearly quite drunk.... rock 'n' roll baby!!!

Stand out tracks of the night included Grace under Pressure, Mexican Stand Off, Leaders of the Free World and the closing track Forget Myself- most off the latest album which I had listened to the most thankfully! Everyone in the seated levels were up on their feet at the end and the audience voices rang out with the words of the chorus for Forget Myself..

No I know I wont forget you.................................

So anyway Elbow are Carly's band of the moment and now I just have a big thirst to see more live bands- jolly good because Franz Ferdinand is this Friday and I'm seriously contemplating going to see the Doves as well.....

Brilliant!