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!