Elbow
“I had originally thought that I was telling stories, but looking back I realise that what I was writing about was where my head was at the time.”
Fresh from finishing their newest orchestral opus, ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey opens up about the magic and loss that inspired it…
One of the most striking things about the new album is how cinematic it is. Each of the songs sounds like it could be lifted from a film soundtrack.
There’s so much in there that it’s still a little hard to focus on. I find that in retrospect, albums take on their own character, and the further away you get from them the easier it is to see what they are. There’s so many different things that went into this record, personal experience aside. The way in which we listened to music change. Mostly, the guys listen to music in their cars, going to and from the studio. I make compilations of stuff that I’m listening to. I have my radio show on 6 Music, and I get an awful lot of new music every week. And so much of it is great, because the record companies know what to send me now because of what I play. I’m getting so much new stuff that I’m almost begging to be on the tourbus so I can actually sit and absorb it. Aside from that, the other guys are influenced by everything from the Teletubbies theme tune and the 24 boxset. It all goes in there.
Thinking in particular about the track ‘Starlings’. It opens the album, but it’s probably the most unconventional thing Elbow have ever done.
I think my mate Tony put it the best: he was well drunk, and his reaction was “who on earth was responsible for the architecture of that song?” I couldn’t tell if he was angry or delighted.
The fanfare of horns come as quite a surprise when you first hear them.
That was quite intentional. To be honest with you, it made sense at the time. And I’m pretty sure that on the copy that went out to the press, the horns are even louder. It was tweaked down for the final master, which I was very disappointed with, but it should still knock your socks off. The lads said it was too jarring, but I don’t agree.
A lot of the songs are vignettes about different characters. They’re almost like short stories. Take ‘The Fix’, for example.
I suppose it’s the difference between writing a limerick and writing a poem. I fancied having some fun with writing in that form. I really did have a lot of fun with the lyrics because I was able to picture me and [Richard] Hawley singing them, especially the line, “our pigeons have finally landed”. There’s something funny about the idea of two Northern men singing a duet. It was partly inspired by Abbott and Costello, you know, a “we’re a pair of swells” thing, the Rat Pack with a Northern twist.
What’s the significance of the album title?
Well, originally it was a Damon Runyan character, but it was also a nickname my dad had for one of his colleagues at work. He had a load of very good nicknames, actually: Harry the Horse, because he has a really long face; and a personal favourite of mine is Joe Cherry, because he was a wine drinker and has a bulbous red nose. There were more, but the Seldom Seen Kid is probably the least offensive. And in a way I wanted to dedicate the record to our friend Bryan, but not have it be an album all about death, because it’s as much about all the usual subjects: love, life and stumbling through the cracks of reality.
It’s a very uplifting album in spite of the fact that it’s full of ghosts.
‘The Loneliness Of The Crane Driver’ is a great metaphor for ambition and being lonely. When I was singing it I realised that I probably needed a holiday. I was strung out because of what had been going on in my private life. I had originally thought that I was telling stories, but looking back I realise that what I was writing about was where my head was at the time. With the song ‘Some Riot’, I sat down and wrote it about a friend that I was worried about, and then afterwards realised that all of the lyrics were about what people do when they don’t want to admit to a doctor that they have a problem. I can see now that I was hammering it myself, and I was projecting my own fears and worries, when in actual fact I was falling down the hole in my neighbourhood that’s mentioned in ‘Grounds For Divorce’.
Without meaning to sound pretentious, was the album a healing process?
Thank you for prefixing that, because I would have said that in the press release if I wasn’t worried that it sounded too pretentious. So yes [laughs]. Definitely. To the point where I thought we’d finished the record and I went on holiday to Tuscany with my sweetheart and some friends. And there were kids around – it’s a totally different vibe when you go on holiday with kids: you know it won’t get too crazy. That’s great, because I’m friends with some real old-school hedonists. But it was a beautiful, wholesome experience, and when I came back the other guys said, “Actually, we’ve been thinking, and we reckon we should do another tune for the record.” That’s where ‘One Day Like This’ came from. It’s the uplifting finish that the album needed. It’s a simpler song in many ways than most on the record.
So much pop is disposable nowadays that it’s rare you get an album you can revisit.
I think there’s room for the disposable about who snogged who in the chippy last Tuesday, because there’s plenty of people who are at the stage in life where that’s the most important thing that’s going on for them. I’ve certainly got suicide notes over so-and-so refusing to kiss me when I was 13. I do remember that being the be-all-and-end-all. But I’m very proud that we do try and tackle the big questions and write for people our age.
Elbow play the following dates next week -
Monday April 21 - Vicar St, Dublin
Tuesday April 22 - Mandela Hall, Belfast
Interview by Ross Thompson
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