We enter just as Peter Alexander Jobson is concluding his set. The songs from his album Burn The Ration Books Of Love feel more suited to a dark smoky jazz club than they do a sun-kissed outdoor arena but he goes down well with the gathering crowd especially when joined by Elbow’s Guy Garvey for the final track.
The Slow Readers Club have been here before supporting James and Pixies and are a guaranteed crowd-puller round these parts. Half way through frontman Aaron Starkie expresses a wish to headline here one day. Their pre-COVID trajectory was taking them along that path before they were cut off just as they hit the top ten and sold out the Apollo and like many others the timing of the pandemic destroyed their momentum and it’s been far harder second time round.
They have the songs to fill this space though as they demonstrate winning over the Elbow fans new to them and delighting those who know and love them - a 50/50 split based on Aaron’s impromptu straw poll. Elbow generously gave them fifty five minutes but they could easily have doubled that to fit in anthems made for nights like this.
The mix is off at first, always an issue in a tricky outdoor space like this but it’s quickly and skilfully rectified by the second song Animals. A well-selected setlist touches on each of their albums from their self-titled debut’s Block Out The Sun to four - singles Technofear, Animals, Boy So Blue as well as fan favourite Know This I Am - from this year’s Out Of A Dream which was a whisker away from the Top Ten this year. They’re out on tour in December with the tenth anniversary Cavalcade and perform two of its many stand-out singles - the drinking guilt of I Saw A Ghost and the uplifting Forever In Your Debt which they dedicate to their hosts Elbow. Equally uplifting are You Opened Up My Heart and the set-closer Lunatic which gets the warmest reception and has pockets of the crowd bouncing around.
They leave with a job well done, the roars of appreciation from a now-full bowl ringing in their ears cementing their reputation as one of the city’s best bands of the last decade.
The Slow Readers Club played All I Hear, Animals, You Opened Up My Heart, Plant The Seed, The Wait, Block Out The Sun, Technofear, Everything I Own, I Saw A Ghost, Know This I Am, Boy So Blue, Forever In Your Debt and Lunatic.
We have a love-hate relationship with Elbow. Between 2004 and 2012 we fell hook, line and sinker and would travel the country watching them. Then we fell hard as we felt the music almost became secondary to the perceived need to force a communal experience as their audience grew that they had been able to create so effortlessly. There was only so many Mexican waves, hands in the air and unnecessary interactions between songs that we could take.
Our “Garvey Bingo” almost had a full house within a few songs - “sing if you know the words, if you don’t know the words sing along”, waving at trains, “let’s see those hands” all dispatched by the caller on stage, but tonight felt different, a reawakening of a love that felt lost and consigned to the past. There’s a beautiful moment where Guy introduces the wrong song and has to correct himself off the cuff where it feels like the clock was turned back and they were imperfectly perfect again.
It’s helped by them starting with Station Approach, possibly the greatest ever love letter written to Manchester, that sense of pride and coming home as you walk out of our woefully inadequate main station down that horrific concrete walkway down to the scruffy gardens and none of that matters because it’s home and it’s OUR home.
The revelation is though that they’ve had a creative rebirth with last year’s Audio Vertigo (an album Guy claims that noone bought) and the recent Audio Vertigo Echo Elbow EP5. Lovers Leap from the former and in particular Adriana Again from the latter follow and feel like capture the essence of the band again. The song subjects and inspirations may have changed from being broke and sat at the bar at the Night And Day to writing after supporting Foo Fighters in Mexico City or reflecting on how Guy’s wife might have been seduced by the charm of The Seldom Seen Kid’s Bryan Glancy, but it feels like they’ve come first circle. There’s eight thousand or so in Castlefield who later find their voice for the big hitters at the end but from our viewpoint they’re equally captivated by the less familiar first half of the show as the sun sets behind the hotel and a chill hits the bowl replacing the warmth and Elbow turn on the heating.
Musically the five of them have a very close bond and the love between them is crystal clear. Guy might be their leader but he, like the thousands in front of him, know the driver is only as good as the car. The Potters, Pete Turner and Alex Reeves, who now feels like he’s been behind the kit forever rather than a replacement for the departed Jupp, create the widescreen palate for both the new and older Elbow to shine. Accompanied by a five piece strings section that also add backing vocals to give the songs light, shade and depth they’re a formidable outfit.
Switching Off is as intense and thought-provoking as it was when it was played in small dark rooms across the city while a partly improvised Puncture Repair shouldn’t work but its short sharp declaration of love and friendship is Elbow diluted to a vocal and a keyboard and brings a tear to our eye.
Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years, a song that passed us by as we gave Audio Vertigo only cursory attention last year, is a glorious moment where the set turns to the more familiar. Build A Rocket Boys’ The Birds and a poignant Lippy Kids, where Guy and the audience exchange whistles, bring memories flooding back and still hit raw nerves. Mirrorball, accompanied by a sea of hands trying to mime the twinkling of the two half disco balls set either side of the stage. Magnificent (She Says) is uplifting, glorious and melts the hearts of any doubters.
It’s brave to then throw in a new song, half introduced before Magnificent She Says, but Sober is genuinely one of the best songs they’ve ever written and isn’t out of place as we’re conducted to sing the one line title back to them.
Grounds For Divorce is the inevitable finale of the main set, preceded by a message about a couple who’ve run a foodbank in Radcliffe for twenty-five years, a reminder that Elbow’s personal circumstances might have changed but they still remember where they came from and what’s the important.
The encore starts with My Sad Captains, a song of friendship and camaraderie that captures the essence of the band and the bond between them, a friendship that men, in particular but not exclusively, need to handle the mental health challenges of modern day society.
We’d moved to the top of the bowl to the loos during the encore break as Castlefield’s unique layout makes it impossible to move around freely. “Just play the fucking song” a gentlemen to our left bellows, almost unable to stand on his own two feet, as Guy gets the audience to sing harmonies for a couple of minutes. It’s the one point where we recall what turned us away from Elbow. It’s all kind of forgotten though as One Day Like This, a song we hadn’t heard for a while, reminds us, with the distance of not having done so,, just how spine-tinglingly beautiful it is. They take their bows and disappear into the night.
Tonight reminded us that this was the band that taught us it’s important to tell your friends that you love them, to hug them and to be open with your feelings as a survival mechanism. We weren’t sure we’d even last the whole gig before it started but by the end we’d fallen in love with them all over again. Let’s see those hands.
Elbow played Station Approach, Lovers Leap, Adriana Again, Kindling, Switching Off, Her To The Earth, Balu, Good Blood Mexico City, Puncture Repair, The Seldom Seen Kid, Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years, The Birds, Lippy Kids, Mirrorball, Magnificent (She Says), Sober, Grounds For Divorce, My Sad Captains and One Day Like This.
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