Elbow, Cambridge Junction

Few would begrudge Elbow the success they achieved with their fourth album, 2008’s ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, but whilst it was not undeserved, it was unexpected. Their previous three albums were all consistently excellent, each one arguably the equal of their Mercury Music Prize winning effort, but whilst they all gained critical acclaim, the sales didn’t match the plaudits, and Elbow seemed destined to remain a cult concern.

What ‘Asleep In The Back’, ‘Cast Of Thousands’ and ‘Leaders Of The Free World’ perhaps lacked was a ‘One Day Like This’, that elusive crossover hit, a track proven by scientists in a laboratory somewhere in Bury to contain all the necessary ingredients to be considered a Festival Anthem. Following the band’s appearance on the Other Stage at Glastonbury it quickly became ubiquitous, soundtracking countless wedding discos, umpteen televisual sporting triumphs and that all important Big Brother finale (not that I watched it, honestly…).

Hence, as guitarist Mark Potter put it recently, Elbow now find themselves in a position they have not been in before - they are about to release an album that people actually want to hear. Shortly after ‘Build A Rocket Boys’ hits the shops the band will be heading out on tour of enormous arenas up and down the UK, including two nights at The O2 Arena and a homecoming, of sorts, at the Manchester Evening News Arena. As preparation for these dates, Elbow play a ‘warm up’ gig at the 900 capacity Cambridge Junction, tickets for which have been regularly changing hands for upwards of £175 a pair on a popular internet auction site.

The band walk on stage to rapturous applause and an orchestral backing track of their own choosing, which Guy Garvey immediately informs us he is having second thoughts about; ‘it sounds like it should be soundtracking a disaster at a colliery’. They launch into ‘The Birds’, the opening track of their new album, and it’s wonderful, life affirming stuff, the vocals soaring over music that is part Radiohead, part Talk Talk.

The set draws heavily from both the new album and ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. In fact, there is nothing from ‘Asleep At The Back’ or ‘Cast Of Thousands’, so no ‘Fugitive Motel’, no ‘Switching Off’, no ‘Scattered Black And Whites’, and no ‘Powder Blue’ (despite the protestations of someone in the audience who is insistent that they play it for her birthday). Perhaps the band are fearful of alienating the fans who only know them from their last album, but it would be criminal if we are never to hear these tracks live again.

Certainly the tracks from ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ seem to enrapture the audience (which is mainly couples, mainly middle aged - there are none of the ‘Lippy Kids’ that the band write about on ‘Build A Rocket Boys’ in attendance). ‘The Bones Of You’, ‘Mirrorball’ and ‘The Loneliness Of A Tower Crane Driver’ are all things of beauty, epic without being overblown, heartfelt without being trite.

At the centre of it all is Guy Garvey, a man with the physique of a pub landlord and the voice of an angel. Between songs he is avuncular and genuinely laugh out loud funny, yet when he sings he makes your heart soar a little. Lyrically he has hit a rich vein of making magic out of the mundane. Friends, family, loved ones - these are all the touchstones of Garvey’s world. It might be the way the music swells at the beginning of ‘Some Riot’ to cause the girl next to me to well up, but it’s the lyric ‘I think when he’s drinking, he’s drowning some riot, what is my friend trying to hide?’ which causes the tears to run down her cheeks.

The new songs do not disappoint either. The aforementioned ‘Lippy Kids’ is a paean to teenage years spending hanging about on street corners - ‘Don’t they know that these days are golden?’. However, the pick of the bunch is the euphoric northern melancholy of ‘Open Arms’, a song likely to blow U2 so far off the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury this year that Eavis will have to send a search party out to Cornwall.

Inevitably Elbow finish with ‘One Day Like This’ (although the band did briefly consider playing ‘Back In Black’ by AC/DC instead, only to discover that the guitarist didn’t know it). One might argue that it is now somewhat overplayed, or that Elbow had written better songs in the first place, but it is still undeniably moving live, and the previously static crowd punch the air in triumph before spilling out into the Cambridge streets, insulated from the cold by a warm glow inside.