Elbow - With Me Through Thick & Thin

Reading festival 2001 was a scorcher of a weekend, right slap bang in the middle of my Ecstasy honeymoon, when chemicals where never far away from my person and I was surrounded by like minded drop-outs trying our best to live the bohemian dream. This weekend all my groups of friends would collide in one sweaty field and life would never be the same again, the metal heads, the indie kids, the dance fiends and the grunge crew all raised to another level with the help of amphetamine and alcohol, some people for the first time, and all united in a desire to push the limits and embrace life as hard as we could. Friday afternoon I had literally rubbed shoulders with the great Iggy Pop as he hurtled through the crowd, nobody can inspire the pursuit of excess like this die hard party survivor, for me the weekend really kicked off then and I tested the level of my bodies resilience to intoxication to the very limits and by Saturday afternoon I was a bedraggled mess, my heart was beating irregularly and the chills where running down my arms as the powder blocked the effects of the liquid and allowed me to drink rum continually. And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Dead... on the main-stage blew my mind, transported me to another cosmic place that I have long been trying to revisit. I was with my girlfriend at the time who pleaded exhaustion and the need to lie down, now many would have taken this as a nudge nudge wink wink and jumped at the chance to return to the camping area intent on getting intense in a tent but my devotion to music exceeded my sexual desire and I suggested we go and lie down at the back of The Radio One Evening Session Stage and listen to whatever was happening there. Musically this was the start of a love affair that has continued to thrill and excite me ever since, the sounds entering our tired and drug addled brains as we lay in a daze at the back of that stage that seems to conjure darkness even in the middle of summer played in my mind for the rest of the week, even through the intense craziness of System Of A Down the next day and my ridiculous antics prior, during and after Queens Of The Stone age’s set the music I had felt a dreamy part of in that tent struck me as the most poignantly beautiful music I have ever heard. I vividly remember checking my program post festival when the come down had finally finished and realising who the band where then trudging into town to buy their album, then to find out the album was called ‘Asleep In the Back’, that was me! Half asleep at the back of a tent witnessing this music for the first time. Since then the words of Guy Garvey and the music of Elbow have felt intensely personnel to me and as is their talent they have tapped in to the personnel and the beauty in the simple and have become a wonderful part of my and many other people’s lives, each one believing the songs where written for them and them alone. This close, intimate relationship with the music has lead this band to be with me through some of the deep lows and dizzying heights of my life and I can link many situations in my history directly and pointedly with lyrics and themes in the band’s music. As the band have gained critical and popular applause over the years I have been rewarded with the opportunity to share that experience with crowds of varying sizes from the up close and intimate of under 500 in ‘The Angel’ in Islington to nearly 13,000 fans in the Wembley Arena and each time spied the look on people’s faces, eyes closed, voice raised, hands in the air revelling in the effect these tunes have had on their lives. I have stumbled down the hill from my Brighton flat in the dark days of living alone, sat with my fourth bottle of wine of the evening  staring out at the sea wallowing in ‘Powder Blue’ wondering how I will carry on. I have sat on the front of a boat at sunset staring across The Timor Sea and soaked up the beauty and the memory of being’ five years ago and three thousand miles away’, And now I am facing the impending approach of my 30^th birthday with less trepidation as before as I am reminded to remember my glory days fondly and be proud of the person you are by the not surprisingly wonderful new album ‘Build A Rocket Boys!’ by Elbow  After finally gaining the recognition for their work with the massive critical and popular acclaim of their last album ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, Elbow have become a household name, so much so that if you’re watching the BBC and the program producers wants to convey triumph and/or jubilance then you are probably listening to ‘One Day Like This’. The band are now a stadium act and have supported Rock heavyweights U2 and thrilled crowds of thousands at premium festival slots, so as the band retreat to write an album they know will sell for the first time expectations run rife between die-hard fans as to what direction they will take, how they will cage or exploit their new power as their ability to write anthems has been taken so close to the great British public’s heart. Garvey had mentioned in interviews that it seemed some fans would rather they fail than become an act churning out a full album that would deliver purely on chest beating and fist pumping musical leviathans. We need not have feared.

Elbow’s strength has always been tempered by the fragility and with the core of bittersweet and wonderful lyrics they have managed to resist the saccharine lure and produced an album that again is deeply personal and instantly engaging. Throughout the album the melody is strengthened by its repetition and underpinned with simple yet effective harmony, the band run along with Garvey’s silken voice to show a unified group singing and sounding out proud of their hometown and looking back on their lives and to the future with a mature approach that it is so easy to forget.

The album is thematically strong and imbibed with a very strong sense of Englishness that although is in this case a very direct homage to the bands Manchester home’s, we can all draw from and take stock against the stories presented to us, demonstrating brilliantly the bands ability to wear their hearts on their sleeves but have the listener wanting to wrapped those sleeved arms round them in a hug rather than pushing them away as smug or sanctimonious.

The large sound is still present with rich vocal underscoring but then there is also the fragile sound of a whistle making us feel like we too are walking the northern streets with a poignant glances seeing things now that surely would have been invisible at the time we were the same age and in the same position as those we are now viewing. The album is about growing up, about all the warmness that perspective can give us, about the conquering of teenage angst and about being achingly proud of the person that you are, so much so that you want to be pointing your fingers to the sky and telling these stories till your old and grey. It’s an album that encourages you to go up to your best friends and grab them and tell them how much you love them and how much they enrich the life in which you are proud to live in.

The album has really delivered on all fronts calling on musical nuances from the bands earlier career and coupling this with the notion that these are songs that will be filling large auditoriums very shortly. There is a strong sense of story and place to all the pieces of music and the album is tied together with a strong bond of love that is impossible to miss whatever environment it will be played in.  My musical love affair continues and I am once again strengthened in my resolve by having this music in my life. Thanks guys!

Empathy & The Head

This week I was struck with a worrying and relatively uncharacteristic bout of empathy, a near 'Amnesty International’ fit of concern for the welfare of my common man. Ranting and raving about the woes committed unto us is more a vitriolic spill of anger for me than anything rooted in any sort of actual concern for others, so this lapse into the world of the international heartfelt worrier was quite unsettling. The catalyst for this was what initially seemed like quite a hum drum television program on the BBC where a London bus driver journeyed to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, to live the life of a bus driver in this sprawling mega-city and live with this man’s family to get a measure of his life. My Communist spirit was distressed by the notion of the effort to reward ratio of these two men the lack of equality of opportunity available to global citizens and the ugly reminder of what lazy, pathetic, whinging pricks we have become in our comfortable society. Seeing families of 14 living in shanty housing measuring less floor space than that of my bathroom and eating stew made from the leftover bones of other people’s chicken dinners soon starts to put my little gripes into perspective. I very nearly actually voiced the annoyance that the water pressure in our Kitchen sink is less powerful than I would like – I mean what an unimaginable prick I am.  But don’t worry it didn’t last long, this blog is not about to become a wanky love letter trying to buy your concern for one disenfranchised nation or another, good old fashioned cynicism soon prevailed as I realised what a great distraction pill I was being fed by the popular media box. Try to make me feel bad for being unhappy with my lot while you bury your un-lubricated fist further up our rears.

And as usual there was plenty to try and distract our attention from this week, mainly the Melted wax figure of John Travolta ranting about the evil oppressors as his country burned, his people became as revolting as his face and Mr. Cameron popped into the region to sell some guns. The Middle East is something I’m never going to understand, I try to follow but the reasoning’s are as complicated as they are shallow. All I can see is legions of brave and tired people who have taken it and taken it for far too long and have risen up to try and claw back some dignity and democracy whatever the cost, the question that vexes me is why are we there. Why do British Politicians feel they need to head to this country in turmoil what are they really bringing to the table except another example of how you can fool the population into believing in the democratic lie that you are force feeding them. Enough of this endless toil and human oppression there is far too much to say about the wonder of music to get bogged down with despots.

Sneaking in early and quickly throwing the music press in a spin is the long awaited new release‘The King Of Limbs’ by Radiohead I can remember when I first bought a digital cd player, spending far more than I really should compared to what I earned and having that guilt in my stomach as I unwrapped it from its protective casing, the people I owed money too would surely demand an explanation for this shiny silver disc I was now clutching in my hands. I can also remember the first CD I listened too on that player, it was ‘Kid A’ and as the music bleeped into my headspace in delicious stereo all guilt was gone and I was transported to another musical plane that Radiohead have delivered me too on so many occasions prior to that. As with so many avid fans this band have a special place in my heart and to all intense and purposes I think they can do little wrong.

The Album is a deliciously dark blend of syncopated beats and soaring tender melodies that twist a bitter tale and transport us to the artistic world that the band have been creating and working towards for twenty years, it’s dystopian governments, it’s ancient tree’s, it’s English customs and folklore, it is eerily wonderful. Short but perfectly formed the album creates a sonic sound space that has been evident in their last three releases but whereas the guitars and gritty crunch had returned on ‘In Rainbows’ here we see a smoother tide and it is the melodic tide of the vocals that really pull you in.  The drum beats dart quickly between machine and man and flick between styles, at times promising ‘a drop’ something from a modern dance genre and then delighting us with its jazz syncopation and fractured edginess. The band clearly have nothing to prove and this has freed them up to produce music that defies expectations and can concentrate fully on the warmness of the sound and creating something that represents men who have been playing music together for most of their lives and have grown with their success rather than grown to further their success.

I feel I must address the doubter’s because this has made me angrier than the ranting of Gaddafi not only at the shallow mindedness of the music listening public but at the cretins who get paid to review music and somehow manage to listen to everything else except the album itself. The release of the album was early and relatively unannounced, there is initially no physical format and yes it is not a guitar album. Most reviews initially concentrated on these facts rather than the music and when it did talk content it was more in a context of comparison to earlier works and telling us all what we wanted from a Radiohead album that somehow what we really wanted from the group was ‘Karma Police II’.I think it is true Irony that a band that at the same time can have foolish dullards make comments about their 'off the wall lack of tunes' and then be called predictable. Radiohead have amassed a body of work that will dwarf the creativity and ingenuity of most recording artists in the last 2 decades, this is a continuation of the cosmically organic growth of an ego free group of Oxford legends. A true definition of irony is somebody who doesn’t know the difference between a definition and an example.

If Guitars and simple melodies are what you want then this band has given them to you, if it’s an indication and insight into what is happening inside the heads of these musical maestro’s now then here it is laid bare. This is everything I could have wanted from them and more and although its slightly galling maybe it makes me happy that it has pissed some people off because they don’t deserve it, what do they know and after all, ‘Anyone Can play Guitar’

All this musical drama in a week that also gave us the much more timed and media friendly release of           Let England Shake’ by PJ Harvey this album is much more than media friendly it is a part and tied up in the reporting of facts in a poignant and poetic way, written as if it was war correspondence. “Can anyone write a protest song?” they asked, well apparently this chameleonic indie icon most certainly can. This is a pointedly honest and straight look at War’s carried out in the good name of England that has the duality that Harvey’s work has always produced being at the same time damming and harsh and also being achingly proud. Quoting words written by soldiers at the sight of their fallen comrades may sound like the album will be heavy and morose but it is quite the opposite it deals with the dark with light touch that is much more revealing than the bulldozing approach. The mature way in which the subject matter is handled is embroiled in the spirit of Englishness in the album. This is not a look at what you wish had been but a reflection of what truly was and what we can learn from that. I think she has really come into her own on this album but at the same time don’t expect we will see anything remotely similar from her again as is her way.

And finally for me and apparently for him in this guise we have ‘The People’s Key’ by Bright Eyes As a scratchy voice begins to deliver a monologue about extra terrestrial beings in the shape of reptilian monsters invading our history strangely we feel to be stomping familiar ground.  The theme of earth and humanity as a small and inconsequential dot is one that seems to weigh heavy on Conor Oberst’s mind and while the cosmic gate of the previous album ‘Cassadaga’ was balanced with pithy folk songs with a balance of swagger and frailty I just don’t feel this offering has the heart to pull it off. Conor’s voice can be disconcerting but in his earlier work while it was heartbroken and forlorn or as part of a big band folk revival it blends nicely but here it seems jarring and stunted. I’m sure that this album will be received well by the many faithful who see that this Nebraskan Folk Pixie can do no wrong and I do believe that he is making music that he loves and is raw but for me I feel that a break would at least do him well to embrace this other worldly image more fully and who knows maybe return as the next Ziggy Stardust.

Thanks for reading and do join me again as I get to blush and swoon at the appearance of a new album from my very favourite band ‘Elbow’ and hope that it can carry me through the pains of returning to being a working man.