Elbow, Leader Cheetah @ TheTivoli, Brisbane 31/03/09

Thu 2nd Apr, 2009 in Gig Reviews

Check out all the photos from the show here on FL

Some bands just have it. The “it” in question can never be fully grasped by simply listing their many plus points…the band must be lived with for many years, both on headphones and experienced live, and only once you’ve fully given yourself over can you hope to understand the alchemistical magic of five people that were born to make music together.

I arrive at the grand old lady that is the Tivoli towards the end of support act Leader Cheetah’s set. This young Adelaide four-piece delivers a competent set of heavily Neil Young-influenced folk rock with some nice surf guitar flourishes thrown in. They finish on a high note with the frontman’s swinging warble almost reminiscent of some of Bernard Sumner’s more melodic work.

It’s been a couple of years since Elbow last hit our shores and those lucky enough to be present at their last Tivoli show have brought friends tonight. A certain ubiquity has descended over the Mancunian quintet since their rapturously received 2008 release The Seldom Seen Kid, and as I waited for them to appear I caught myself wondering what effect this increased acclaim might have had on them, if only ever so slightly tinged with the anxiety a music snob or anorak feels after his little secret gets discovered.

My train of thought is interrupted by cascading blue light as two female violinists stroll onstage to the quiet rippling murmur of the Starlings intro. They are closely followed by the five sharply attired members of Elbow, most of whom are armed with trumpets. The Tivoli erupts. Frontman Guy Garvey’s emergence as the best first-line-of-a-song writer in the business is fully evident here :

“How dare the Premier ignore my invitation, he’ll have to go.
So, too, the bunch he luncheons with, it’s second on my list of things to do.”

As the plodding wonder of the opener’s peace is shattered by the loud horn bursts throughout, it’s clear we are in for rare experience tonight. The two next sequentially ordered songs from the album follow with The Bones Of You and Mirrorball, the former’s shimmying time-travelling lament perfectly complemented by the latter’s sprinklings of piano and sweeping strings achingly urging us all to “lift off love”.

No Elbow gig is complete without the rapier wit of Garvey offering up pearls of between-song banter and after earlier dedicating Bones of You to the impressive size of our fruit bats he informs us that the next song is completely out-dated due to Dubya’s departure before launching into a scathing Leaders of the Free World from the album of the same name. It’s bassist Pete Turner’s tune though, his raw prowling bass belying his smooth Rat-Pack exterior.

The heartbreaking intro of The Stops is next, Mark Potter’s sublime acoustic change-ups willing the crowd through their pre-rehearsed “Don’t Look Down”s. We’re then transported to darker territories with the opening track of debut album Asleep in the Back, the futuristic monotonous grandeur that is Any Day Now. If a better ode to escaping one’s hometown has been written then I’d like to hear it, it’s swirling hypnotic drone tracing back to their earlier, more alienated sound.

After Garvey adds percussion to a mighty Grounds for Divorce, we are then whisked away to a sea of vertigo angst via The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver. A truly defining moment in the night’s set, it’s the perfect soundtrack to a revised Die Hard, one in which a Holly-less John McClane is left to fight off terrorists without so much as Carl Winslow on the police radio to keep him company.

Another Garvey anecdote follows as he shares a past conversation with Pete about choosing your last words ahead of time so that when life flashes before your eyes you have your quote picked out. This as it turns out is the inspiration for the gorgeous Switching Off. The beauty of bands that possess the songwriting variety that Elbow do is that you leave every gig with new favourites and this number’s status as such is assured after the ethereal version offered up tonight.

An epic Newborn follows, keyboardist/producer Craig Potter’s organ coating the room as drummer Richard Jupp reaches the almost unbearable climax. The band then lightens the mood somewhat by starting up ‘Weather to Fly’ at the back of stage with a drinking pick-me-up jam before heading into a more robust version than the recorded one, ably backed by the returning violinists.

Some of the biggest cheers for the night are reserved for the unabashed positivity of first-set closer One Day Like This, Garvey avoiding Jay Leno comparisons with the sincerity with which he meets and greets audience members lost in the mantra of “So throw those curtains wide, one day like this a year’d see me right”.

They exit to massive call-back applause with Guy and Pete racing each other off the stage, but even the most rabid Elbow fan would not be prepared for what comes next.

The maudlin genius of Puncture Repair sees Garvey stop the room dead as only he can with the simplest of refrains, “I leaned on you today”. The band are then welcomed back for another standout of the night, the complete beauty of Station Approach transporting the crowd from wallowing homesickness to full homecoming romp. It’s moments like these that the pure and utter genius of Garvey’s lyrics combined with his band’s music really shine, a work of art.

And if all that wasn’t enough, Elbow close tonight’s show by reaching back nearly a decade to floor the room with the classic Scattered Black & Whites, Garvey hauntingly repeating over and over again, “I come back here from time…to time…….I shelter here someday”.

And with that, they are gone. I’ll leave the summing up to my good friend Joey Jo Jo Shabadoo Jr who texted me hours later with “sleep is a crime after a religious experience like that”. My fruitless efforts to do so after such a performance in total agreement with that sentiment.