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Lead singer Guy Garvey's troupe just keep on delivering
innovative, understated and jaw-droppingly beautiful records. So while all eyes in the industry
were on Coldplay's Brixton Academy show, Elbow, in the fine company of current buzz band
Fleet Foxes, were staging their own masterpiece at the far more salubrious Royal Festival Hall.
Plaudits have showered down upon openers Fleet Foxes like the rain that is certain to drench the
Glastonbury crowds next week. Everywhere you look, music journalists are dusting off their 'Big Book
of Arcade Fire Cliches' to herald the arrival of the new baroque pop messiahs.
Luckily, the band are the real deal, kicking off with a jaw-dropping acapella version of Sun It
Rises, filling a venue that Brian Wilson has called his 'spiritual home' with a pitch-perfect
Beach Boys homage. Much has been made of the band's folky elements, but they prove they can
rock out with the best of them - Your Protector is as good a backwoods stomp as you'll find outside
of a Kings of Leon record, while set highlight White Winter Hymnal begins as a nursery
rhyme-simple chant before morphing into a soaring, Love-esque harmony that transports you to
the snowbound mountains and forests Pecknold eulogises.
After a set of such precocious excellence, old hands Elbow need to pull something special out of
the bag to avoid being foreshadowed by their support act. And, incredibly, they do, to quite
comprehensively show the young pretenders who's boss. Despite the scruffy, shambling exterior, Elbow
have always bought a certain amount of panache to their concerts and the group turn in a performance
that is simply stunning in its emotional intensity.
The band, with Garvey nattily attired in a black suit and bowler hat, dispense with the noise
early. The victorious chant of Station Approach bounces around the Festival Hall like a terrace
chant, while the creepy Bones Of You sees him pugilistically rolling up his sleeves as if to take on
the world. This he does a few seconds later, dedicating the caustic Leaders of the Free World to
'London's special guest' George Bush.
It's easy to forget how good a band Elbow really are. It seems they've always been with us -
despite having only released four records - ploughing a lone miserable furrow while contemporaries
like go supernova.
Halfway through, the band takes a step back to welcome onto the stage a thirty-strong male voice
choir, all dressed identically to the frontman. As the never-ending stream of mini-Garveys troop on
stage, they chant the unmistakable introduction to early single Anyday Now over and over, and the
band slide into the song.
It's a piece of pure theatre, bettered almost immediately during
Starlings. After the lights drop, and the song's electronica opening thrums around the auditorium,
Garvey, bassist Pete Turner and guitarist Mark Potter are picked out in spotlights as they play a
single note trumpet fanfare directed to the venue's royal box. In the box are another
group of trumpeters, playing the fanfare back to them. It's one of those moments of
audience interaction that Elbow seem remarkably good at.
If the rest of the concert failed to live up to this moment, it is understandable. However, the
quality never drops - Grace Under Pressure's 'We still believe in love, So fuck you' coda is
beautiful in its simplicity, New Born sees keyboardist Craig Potter climbing up into the
now-illuminated organ behind the stage like a long-haired phantom of the opera, drawing a standing
ovation from every member of the audience.
During set closer One Day Like This the choir march to the front of the stage and hundreds of the
crowd rush to meet them. As they finish, they place their hats on members of the audience's heads,
as if they are anointing their disciples, and Guy Garvey thanks the fans for 'the gig of their
lives'. It's hard to disagree with the sentiment.
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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees
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