Ultimately hard to resist: Elbow reviewed

Spectator

2 days ago

Our relationships with bands are often very like our relationships with people. Some are pure and lasting love. Some start promisingly but spoil. Some are quick, thrilling flings, others a more meaningful yet distant connection.
Elbow are the kind of band you enjoy having a pint with every few months. Not always the most exciting company, perhaps, but smart, convivial and good hearted. Thoughtful. Reliable. They might arrive – bang on time – for your latest rendezvous armed with a funny story about a beleaguered colleague, but they're unlikely to announce they're running off to Brazzaville with the intern.
You know where you are with Elbow – in this instance, a shallow concrete amphitheatre in Glasgow's leafy west end. The Kelvingrove Bandstand has been successfully hosting shows for a decade as part of the Summer Nights series which runs throughout August, and which this year rather leaves Edinburgh International's offerings during the same period in the shade.
Depending on one's mood, Elbow's music can land anywhere on a spectrum between a tad boring and quietly ravishing. In such a bucolic setting, there was always a fair chance of the latter winning out over the former. Their big, enveloping sound – the core five-piece band was filled out with additional backing vocalists and horn players – elegantly filled the evening air on songs such as 'The Birds', 'The Seldom Seen Kid' and the gorgeous 'Lippy Kids'. The last of these is the ultimate in Elbowism: tender, knowing, literate, at once terribly sad and oddly uplifting.
Tracks such as 'Her To The Earth' and 'Things I've Been Telling Myself For Years' from last year's number one album Audio Vertigo held their own alongside more established favourites. And while the default setting was a kind of stately drift, there were moments when the music became agreeably gnarly, as on the thundering 'Good Blood Mexico City', the surging 'Adriana Again', and the churning bluesy groove of 'Grounds For Divorce'.
For all the musical craft, Elbow would be a little lost without vocalist Guy Garvey, who is in many respects the quintessential modern indie star, with a show on Radio 6 Music and a programme on Sky Arts (From The Vaults). The sense of existing familiarity between him and his audience was used to good effect. Folk musicians would traditionally introduce each song with a short primer on provenance. Garvey tended to do the same, placing each tune in its emotional context. Now and then it felt like Stephen Fry fronting a BBC Proms tribute to Genesis.
By the time the set reached the closing duo of 'My Sad Captains' and 'One Day Like This' – Elbow's best-known song by a mile, and comfortably one of their least appealing – the feeling of happy communality in the cooling air was ultimately hard to resist. It was nice to catch up. Let's do it again sometime.
Karine Polwart is a singer, songwriter and storyteller rooted in Scotland's folk community. In recent years curiosity and a collaborative spirit has taken her work into interesting new areas. In 2016, with composer and sound designer Pippa Murphy, she wrote an acclaimed one-woman piece, A Pocket Of Wind Resistance, staged at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. Several other cross-genre projects followed.
Polwart has collaborated again with Murphy on Windblown, which premièred during the fringe with a short run at the Queen's Hall. Emerging from her spell as artist-in-residence at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh, the show mixed song, poetry, spoken word and movement to tell the story of the enormous sabal palm tree which stood in the Gardens for over two centuries, quickly outgrowing its original glass house. In 2021, the already ailing 60ft palm was chopped down to make way for extensive renovations.
From this central narrative trunk Polwart, admirably supported by pianist Dave Milligan, wove a moving and quietly mesmerising spell that touched on loss, lockdown, endings and new beginnings. The recurring lyrical theme – 'For the time is nearly over' – built up to assume the power of an incantation.
The folk-inflected music and nature-infused words were beautiful, and Polwart's command of all aspects of the performance exemplary. As a new work by one of the most significant creative figures currently working in Scotland, here's hoping Windblown scatters to other realms soon enough. It already feels like it might become a fascinating new friend.