Guy Garvey is the Stephen Fry of alt rock and by that I mean he looks a bit like Fry from a distance and has some of the intellectual clever clever we associate with Fry. Plus they are both gay. Well, both except for Guy who just broke up with Emma Umsworth.
I never much liked him because.
1. That beard man, it’s got to go.
2. He is so reasonable.
3. The music bores me.
Or is that bored me? After five years of giving Elbow the elbow, The Taking Off And Landing Of Everything, caught my ear last month and then, perhaps needless to add, Pitchfork tore into it and that was it. Overnight I was a born again Elbow fan.
The album is excellent and so was 2011’s build a rocket boy which I dismissed out of hand. What can I say? I couldn’t hear it to say my life. I think it is Garvey’s voice that put me off, he sounds like Thom Yorke if Yorke was a baritone.
Anyway, all is forgiven and if you are doing nothing may 16th, get thee to Webster Hall -sold out of course but that’s what Stubhuub is for.
Here is the setlist:
This Blue World (intro)
Charge
The Bones of You
Open Arms
Fly Boy Blue/Lunette
Real Life (Angel)
The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver
The Night Will Always Win
The Birds
Mirrorball
My Sad Captains
New York Morning
Grounds for Divorce
Encore:
Starlings
Lippy Kids
One Day Like This
