Elbow

Fri 10th Jun, 2011 in Features

Richard Jupp, describes himself as “the lowly drummer” for Manchester heroes Elbow and is incredibly humble for a man who plays with a group that can fill arenas across the UK and picked up the prestigious Mercury music prize with their last record. The band has been a sentimental favourite since their stunning debut Asleep in the Back, which was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize back in 2001, but it wasn’t until they won that award with their fourth record, 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid, that they found themselves basking in the glow of success.

Following the Mercury win the sales of The Seldom Seen Kid skyrocketed by 688%, but if the win and growing fan base has placed any extra pressure on the group for their fifth record it doesn’t show on the new album Built a Rocket, Boys!. Rather than showing the signs of egos expanded by sales and fame, the new record is a nostalgic affair, in the vein of the glorious tune Scattered Black and Whites that closed their debut album. Led by Guy Garvey’s stunning vocals and lyrics, Elbow have made a habit of delivering beautiful records of heartfelt emotion, though Jupp makes no grand claims for the bands career, telling FL that Elbow is simply “five normal lads from Manc [who] make sort of ‘air wobble’ for a living”.

It has been mentioned that this new album came together easier than previous Elbow records; why was that the case?
I think basically because we knew we had the support of a great label and the springboard effect of having the success of Seldom Seen Kid behind us I think we were going to take three months off at the end of the tour. We had a great homecoming show in Manchester at the arena there were 17 and a half thousand people going nuts which surprised us really. We were going to take a break after 18 months of touring and within a month we were back in the studio. We just wanted to get cracking; get another one on the go.

Did winning the Mercury help give you more confidence in your songs?
It’s just the matter of giving us the confidence to work to the best of our abilities because we’re not a genre defining band. We just kinda do our own thing and it’s hopefully come good. It’s all about confidence of your abilities and obviously not to drift into complacency which you must never do. It did give us the liberation feeling of ‘look, we can try stuff’. We’re five normal lads from Manc and we make sort of ‘air wobble’ for a living. We’ve found our own sounds like a kind of Boys Own/Cub Scout thing in the studio – there’s no set way of recording or doing anything. It gives us that opportunity to spend days and nights working stuff through, play each others instruments and just be completely free with what we’re doing. But as I say it doesn’t give enough liberty to be complacent. Maybe in a couple of albums time we could start doing strange orchestral pieces on car bonnets.

Are there any moments on Build a Rocket that you wouldn’t have had the confidence to include on earlier records?
The synth tracks predominantly on the Night Will Always Win. That was a bit of a departure for us something that was so clean in production, so straight forward. We’d always wanted to work with synths, but only frequency-wise so you get a bass or a high note without anything in-between.

The new album begins very confidently with a pair of lengthy tunes. It’s not an easy opening for newer fans was there a lot of debate about opening the record like that?
Yes [laughs] a lot of concern. We’d wanted to start with Lippy Kids as that is the key sentiment of the album – the way that we wanted to present the album as a whole. It’s all about reminiscing, regressing, looking back and what have you… but them The Birds gestated over a period of about nine months, maybe longer, and grew into what we call ‘typical Elbow’ builder – tracks like Newborn and Station Approach. Start small, end massive. Eventually we just thought ‘Sod it. It’s a cracking track. It’s got a groove on. It’s reminiscent of the first album. So let’s just try it’. We’ve had discussions about whether we should start live with such a long track but we knew that it gets to its peak and it works.

Were you looking back and reminiscing to try to avoid becoming ‘a middle aged rock band’?
We’ve discussed this long and hard – the Peter Pan effect. We haven’t grown up and why would we we’re lucky enough to have an incredible job. We’ve been together longer than we’ve not. I’m the eldest at 37 and so we’ve been together three years longer than we’ve not… if that makes any sense. We managed to grow up, raise families, pay the gas bill pay the mortgage and tasted some kind of success on the back of that. After Seldom we went up to the island of Mull off the coast of Scotland – to a friend’s converted chapel – we’ve been there a few times over our career but I think this time was pivotal after the success and awards and lavish ceremonies and playing arenas it was a bit of a time to get our heads together. We were naturally going to look back at our time together and the logistics of staying together, being mates. We got our heads together – cooked, got pissed and wrote one track, which was Jesus is a Rochdale Girl.