With his Manc accent and Stephen Fry beard, his willingness to engage his audience on whole other levels, and showmanship skills as lead singer and frontman, Guy Garvey is a secret to the UK prog rockers Elbow. If you don’t like Elbow, you will still like Elbow on stage because Garvey will sell you on them hard. It is a hard sell of authenticity and the particularities of friendship -the band, together in one form or the other since 1990, with each other, and Garvey’s friendship with us.
At a sold out Webster Hall in support of their current, one of the best albums of the year The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything, fronting four members of the band, two violinists and an extra set of drums, Garvey gave a masterclass on rock and roll stardom and how to present it. Like an unweirded out Thom Yorke meets a smarted out Liam Gallagher plus a lively upped Damon Albarn circa 1996, Garvey is the centrifugal force of Elbow: he takes a good group and makes them great, on stage.
In the UK, Elbow are huge, in the States not so much, but New York is the sort of environment bands like Elbow thrive on. Smart as hell prog rockers who don’t mind a good mope with ludicrously literate (though not particularly poetic) lyrics and the sort of hooks, a cry of “hey” hook here, a convoluted chorus there, which fills Arenas in the UK. More populist than Radiohead, more difficult than Coldplay, less abrasive than U2, and more laid back than Manic Street Preachers, Elbow can stake their claim to being one of the world class UK bands still standing.
Garvey took (over) the stage to “Charges” and closed the set proper with “Sad Captains”, the two best songs off Take Off, and mixed obvious crowd pleasers with difficult mood numbers. They lost me but not the rest of the fans and they didn’t lose me entirely, even during long difficult ones “The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver” and “Birds” and even during (from their 2005 The Leaders of the Free World) “Great Expectations”, a song that exemplifies every single thing I loathed about the band for years. “Great Expectations” is a dreary lo fi slog of a song and here is the kicker: Garvey asked for some quiet for the song and adds “now everybody go shhhhh” and it is so endearing Elbow get away with it. After the two brackets that open and close the set proper, Elbow dole out their singalongs with a careful sense of timing, the when to place what where. The last four songs of the set are all forward momentum, and the final encore, certainly their more joyful career high “One Day Like This” is a fitting end. I was listening to the London Philharmonic version as part of the London Olympics just the other day and the song, even that huge version, places Elbow in the big time leagues where a number is both intimate and huge: it is the sort of song that can sustain an entire career and Garvey, who has the melodramatic gifts of a mid-1970s David Bowie or a post-Smiths Morrissey, can sing his deepest feelings without squeeshing our faces in it like James Cagney with a grapefruit: he throws himself into the role with a passionate punch that takes you along by force and while when Bono does that he gets stuck in bombast, Garvey exudes good guy bon homie.
The rest of the band, who write the music to Garvey’s lyrics, are more than along for the ride. Especially guitarist Mark Potter, equally adept at acoustic folk and hard rocking prog sprawling though tight and short solos, but on stage they are window dressing to Garvey’s overwhelming cult of personality. Guy is so open to his environment that he mixes a dedication of “New York Morning” to a couple who have been to every concert in New York City since 1975 (I think Garvey meant performed by a Manchester band) and only spent one night apart (my definition of hell on earth but to each its own) and a couple he notices at the edge in the first row. The man in the audience went down on one knee and asked his companion to marry him. Garvey loves it, has the audience chant their names, and returns to both couples over and over again. It is as if he wants to place Elbow between the two: as if Elbow’s stories are about the things inbetween for people elsewhere. Garvey ended a long time relationship last year and guitarist Craig Potter added a baby to his family and keyboard player Mark Potter did the same, so the Elbow family are in the midst of this familial merry go round. Given the circumstances, nothing could have exemplified the bands highs and low (fis) of progressive pop maneuver better than this synchronicity. But really not synchronicity, it is because of Garvey’s openness to connecting with the audience which lets him find building blocks to a better gig; in the UK Elbow fill arenas so it is even more to the bands credit that they can scale back down.
In the middle of the action, Garvey is all good guy bounciness and camp counselor motivation speaker, “Can you take anymore advise?” he asks us before singing about how to mourn our dead love ones and the sadder the song, this one, “the night will always win” has him crooning “I miss your stupid face”, the more willing he is to explain the whys of the song. Guy presents his songs with a stars charisma: He clutches and releases his mic over and over again and he sings very directly to us, gesturing, throwing up his hands, telling us to wiggle our fingers, and with none of the uncertainty that has plagued even some one as cocksure as Lily Allen lately (Garvey’s playfulness with the fans in the balcony is in sharp distinction, to Allen’s frustration with the balcony denizens at Highline on Tuesday). At the age of forty, Garvey has a beer gut and an untucked shirt covers it as he pulls up his pants in a sort of nervous tick. The band as a whole have reached middle aged scathed but not that much the worse for wear, they look their age but it suits them. Garvey is very Manchester (though born in Lancaster), very much a part of a scene that gave us Tony Wilson. So “So It Goes”. Elbow’s Manchester mentality (to my mind, after New York and London the greatest rock and roll city of them all) takes the pomp out of the band. They aren’t dicks.
Elbow are part of the middle class public school toffs that include Coldplay and Radiohead but unlike those two names, and despite the rest of the bands coolness on stage, they are not class conscious. With Elbow none of the things that made Genesis circa The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway such a University Challenge Tory backbencher anti-rock and roll groove thang, effect them. Elbow are a great band because they are an inclusive band. Sometimes a bore, sometimes self-important (though not on stage), and sometimes they really do suck, yet they include you in and have the rouseiness of a football stadium with the subduedness of a manic depressive. They are one hit away from breaking really big in the States so catch em in nightclubs while you can.
Grade: B+
