Manchester band Elbow are renowned for their articulate and melancholic dream pop, keyboardist Craig Potter talks to ToneDeaf’s Anaya Latter about why they’re so proud of their new album Build a Rocket Boys! and thrilled to be touring Australia again.
Potter is self deprecating in a classic British manner about their early output. Elbow have been together for 20 years, and Potter joined when he was just 15 years old. “Well we were really rubbish for about 10 years. We didn’t know what we wanted to do – we were just playing stuff just because we could technically… It was probably a good thing that no one picked up on us for ten years because it wouldn’t have lasted very long if they had, looking back now,” he concedes.
Potter feels that their hard work has come to fruition with their most recent album, Build a Rocket Boys! where simplicity and trust in the arrangements has been paramount. “I think it’s almost come together on this last album, there are a lot of really sparse arrangements which is what we’ve always aimed at. We enjoy playing stripped back stuff, more so on this last album than any others. Some songs are what we’ve always wanted to do and now finally we have finally had the confidence to do this, this time around.”
Elbow’s song writing process sounds quite organic and dynamic, with a collaborative basis. He describes it as a “little bit of everything really, I can sit there and write a piece of music and take it to the band, or someone else might come up with the lyrics and we also might just sit around with the band and jam. It comes from all sorts of ways and it sort of has to, I think, because it keeps it interesting.”
“With [Build a Rocket Boys! and previous album The Seldom Seen Kid] there was no outside involvement from producers or engineers – we do everything ourselves, and so we have a lot of time to experiment,” he says. But rather than a conscious aim to always retain total creative control, Potter suggests that the band simply didn’t get to a point where they feel like they needed outside involvement.
“I actually thought it might be nice to work with someone else this time, but I guess the way we write and the way it came together there was never a point where we felt right, we should get someone in…The songs came together and it sounded good and before we knew it we were nearly there.”
Potter perceives that one particular song became a blueprint for the album, ‘Jesus is a Rochdale Girl’. “We wrote it quite early on and that sort of set a standard thematically for the rest of the album – about looking back, returning home, looking back to youth,” he says.
The keyboardist says the band spend a lot more time in the recording stage rather than mixing. “I think experience wise I’ve developed more as a producer and mixer and we’ve all gained a lot of experience and I wanted to keep things as simple as possible. Things come out stronger if you can record them as you intend them in the first place.”
He evokes a sense of space as being vital to the recording process, with each song having a quality of its own. “It’s about space and just having each song have its own setting almost, its own vibe. That’s what we aim for.”
Elbow famously recorded the refrain for their song ‘Grace Under Pressure’ at the 2002 Glastonbury festival. On the subject of choirs, Potter says “we almost treat them as another instrument you know, to create an atmosphere. And there’s something very emotive about hearing a large group of people singing, no matter what they’re doing. And we started to use that subtly as well as the big anthemic singalong type moments, especially this time around.”
Elbow’s lead singer Guy Garvey has spoken about sadness and struggle being a large part of the creative impulse behind a lot of his lyrics, and Potter agrees that melancholia can inspire and stimulate the artistic process, “Yeah I think it does all the time. I think a lot of Guy’s writing is ultimately very positive. It’s sometimes described as depressing, a lot of people get a lot from it and find it quite uplifting. It tackles heavy themes but ultimately there’s always there a positive somewhere.”
Elbow are certainly hitting their strides with the newfound confidence that Potter describes. He reiterates that Build A Rocket Boys! is “the album we always wanted to make,” and there’s certainly a depth and substance to the album that substantiates Elbow’s pride. Potter adds that they are already thinking about the next album and what it might sound like, but until then Australian audiences will get a chance to see them perform their current creative summit – at Splendour In The Grass in Queensland and at a series of side shows in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney.
Perth, Metro City – Monday July 25
Melbourne, Palace Theatre – Wednesday July 27
Sydney, Enmore Theatre – Friday July 29
Tickets on sale 9am, Friday May 27 through Ticketek.
