As usual, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey begins with a joke: “Good evening, sorry we’re late.” This Glasgow gig was originally intended to be the first night of a short tour of UK arenas, before Scotland was brought to a snow-choked standstill by the “Beast from the East”. A surprisingly nimble logistical reshuffle means Elbow take to the Hydro stage just three days later than advertised, even if it means that, instead of riding a wave of rowdy Friday night excitement, the Manchester veterans are required to overcome some chilly Monday blues.
It is not the first crisis Elbow have had to negotiate in recent years. Drummer and founder member Richard Jupp left the band, by all accounts abruptly, in 2016. After a brief period of soul-searching and creative readjustment, Elbow seemed to come out swinging in 2017, bookending the year with a well-received seventh album Little Fictions and a muscular, stocking-ready best-of collating the highlights of their remarkable two-decade career. But the schism still seems to have left a mark. Garvey pays heartfelt tribute to Jupp twice over the course of this show, while also taking care to warmly introduce his touring replacement, Alex Reeves.
Garvey’s crumpled pub-quizzer charisma has always been Elbow’s secret weapon, a sly counterpoint to their unapologetically earnest brand of skyscraping indie rock. The singer does not even need to speak, getting his first cheers simply by theatrically supping a pint and rolling up his shirtsleeves to signal his readiness. He gently teases guitarist Mark Potter, and characterises his relationship with Potter’s keyboardist brother Craig as a “27-year power struggle”, while also rather unsportingly threatening to tickle him during the spare, heartsick piano ballad Puncture Repair.
These cheeky asides – what Garvey calls “spontaneous frontmanship” – leaven a two-hour set in which the music broils like a stormy sky, bolstered by some sonic sleight-of-hand that makes Elbow’s all-female, four-piece string-and-brass section sound like an entire orchestra. If the venue is at less than capacity (Garvey reckons three-quarters of the original ticket-holders made it to the rescheduled date), the massed terrace chant of “build a rocket boys!” during the nostalgic, waltz-time sway of Lippy Kids has stadium-filling force.
The showstopping Grounds for Divorce is preceded by Garvey forcefully cajoling and coaching different sections of the venue into creating an impressively harmonised chord that segues into the song’s addictive chain-gang stomp. When the band return for the encore, Garvey also brings out their impressively bearded support act, John Grant, for Kindling (Fickle Flame), a standout from Little Fictions recently reimagined and rerecorded as a duet to celebrate Grant and Elbow’s burgeoning bromance. Garvey and Grant – who, rather cutely, seem to be wearing almost identical outfits – pass off lines to each other before coming together for a series of swooning harmonies.
The final song is, inevitably, One Day Like This, Elbow’s lush signature track that has proved durable enough to be synonymous with both the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. There is some expected (and extended) audience participation, although Garvey seems tickled by the addition of an extra Flower of Scotland singalong once the last chords have died away. For a country still shaking off the paralysing effects of record snowfall, Elbow’s combination of warmth and grit feels like the perfect care package.
- At First Direct Arena, Leeds (0844 248 1585), 6 March, and O2, London (0844 856 0202), 7 March.
