Elbow have
been touring festivals around Europe and have
been playing mostly fairly short sets of fan favourites. The weather turned out
kind for this outdoor show, part of the Bristol Sounds series being held on the
waterfront in the city centre, probably to the relief of bands, promoters and
audience.
Elbow are one
of the best current mainstream live bands, the songs take on new dimensions in
performance compared to their sometimes slightly antiseptic studio albums. The three
songs from the Little Fictions album are good examples. The title song and ‘Kindling’
particularly have matured nicely over the last couple of years in concert,
compared to their (to me) occasionally disappointing original recordings.This was a
fan pleasing set with nearly all their best audience participation numbers as
well as a new song that appears to be called Empires. Guy Garvey is the supreme
frontman of his generation, holding the audience, not all of whom seemed to be
regular concertgoers, in the songs and through a tale of a band night out
involving bass player Pete Turner and copious amounts of beer. The fact that
despite conspicuous success and doubtless its trappings he remains firmly connected
to his audience speaks volumes for the man and his band.
The set list
is published here,
and built to the three big "joining in" songs, ‘Lippy Kids’ (my personal
favourite Elbow song), the inevitable ‘One Day Like This’ and ‘Grounds For
Divorce’. And then they were gone, the 11pm curfew meant no encore, but we got
what we came for, the songs, which are of such a consistent high quality that
they can still step back fifteen years and find songs worthy of an airing.So why did the people to my right have to keep chatting through the quiet bits? My Sad Captains was particuarly affected. Surely they paid the same ticket price we did, so why not LISTEN!
Support was
from Another Sky who were not helped by the usual bottom of the bill sound
problems. A Google of their appearances at SXSW and on Later suggests this was
not their best night. Villagers are never going to be my new favourite band,
they just seem to lack bite, and frankly the Flugelhorn moments had me diving
for the beer bus. Anyway we were there to see Elbow who delivered as they
always do. A new song suggests a new album, and they have recorded shows on the
last few tours so hopefully a nice CD/DVD live box set will appear at some
point.
