One of the books I’m reading at the moment is Stuart Maconie’s excellent Pies and Prejudice, where the radio DJ and ex-NME journalist (starting the rumour that Bob Holness played the sax on Baker Street in the process) travels the North of England’s many environs, shattering some stereotypes and confirming others about the curious geography and even more curious residents of all those bits outside London that make up the whole of The North, but who also retain a fierce, almost tribal, retention of very local cultures, dialects, attitudes and music that makes a mockery of lumping us all together as “that little village outside London”, especially when we start delving into bitter rivalries of natures sporting, trade and political that can go back centuries.
I am from the North of England, and I love the place. As do Elbow, who have been eulogising this part of the world, and Greater Manchester in particular, for some time.
Elbow’s career has been long and persistent, secure in the knowledge that they were always making great music, and their time finally came when they won the Mercury Music Prize in 2008 for the wonderful album The Seldom Seen Kid and everyone finally took notice.
And so now we come to their new one – it’s probably not unfair to say that this is new territory for the boys, as this could be created with a relative safety net of the knowledge of a large audience waiting to snap this up, and arenas being filled in anticipation of more emotionally-charged and socially & personally inclusive anthems.
What we get is a band undoubtedly relaxed enough to make a record on their own terms and to their specifications, but still containing the same desire to move forward (the telling line in the album’s opener is “Looking back is for the birds”) and celebrate the life around them as always. And while there’s a few songs here that will fit the huge halls and stadia that their popularity now affords, it’s a remarkably quiet and intimate album that nonetheless soars on the thermals of great songwriting, arrangements and lyrics that seem to be taking the band to a whole new lofty plateau, carrying all of their previous following with them – an achievement that so few bands breaking through can manage.
Standing out amongst a record full of competition is Lippy Kids – a song that celebrates that currently demonised pastime of the teenager; hanging about in groups like we all used to and all probably miss being able to do. ”Do they know these days are golden… Build a rocket boys!” sings Guy Garvey, both chiding youth for not doing anything other than loitering but also embracing them for doing the same, as the act of simply being somewhere with one’s friends regardless of activity (or lack thereof) is something brilliant and deserving of such devoted, honest praise. At the other end of this thought process is the next track With Love and its rightly shamelessly romantic narrative of true love in old age, beautiful thoughts and sentiments that we all ultimately aspire to.
A noisy interlude is ably provided with the joyous (Teardropesque) explosion of first single Neat Little Rows, but ultimately Build a Rocket Boys! is an album weighty of thought and warmth of execution. Where it becomes truly huge in scope is in its use of orchestration and Manchester’s own Hallé Youth Choir to punctuate choruses and intentions, giving a more open and genuinely friendly way of filling huge spaces than a thousand guitar solos ever could. The choir’s reprise of The Birds with 68-year old piano tuner John Mosely taking lead vocal duties (I’d love to know the story behind that one) could so easily have dropped into oversentimentality, but instead it raises the album further into a feeling of community and cameraderie that I guess only a bunch of people who have stuck together for two decades can manage with all honesty.
And it all ends as gently as it began, with the beautiful Dear Friends emphasising the feeling of togetherness between bandmates, and also between them and us lot, with our noses pressed up against the window of the childhood sweetshop that this record inhabits. The closing line “…and you are the stars I navigate home by” is moving and affirming, and a fitting end to this.
Elbow are certainly from and of the North, using Manchester as a romantic character especially in much the same manner that Woody Allen used New York or Steve Martin depicted Los Angeles. Where other bands or movements have used their geography and culture as a boundary or flag of exclusivity, this band offer this quirky corner of the universe as something for people to embrace rather than something to hit people from Yorkshire and Merseyside over the head with as is usually the case. Stadium-rock types they may now be as their status dictates, but the’re as human and inclusive as ever, and their love of life and the people in it is a pleasure to listen to.
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