Normally, artists who amble along as slow burners reach a point where they’ve garnered a faithful following, suited distinctly to their genre – Elbow are different. For them, the grounding has been slow but solid without any line-up changes since they ventured out of the damp, but warm hearted Manchester scene. It’s been a long, cobbled road for the true gentlemen of modern music – dropped by labels, denied all knowledge of by Richard Branson while actually signed to his own V2 label and still pressured for sales but still managing to be thrice nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.
The MMP has above all, been exceptionally kind to the band, nominating their brooding debut Asleep In The Black right back in 2002 along with astronomically successful fourth album, 2008’s prize winner Seldom Seen Kid and most recent Build A Rocket Boys. Graft, it seems, pays off in spades.
With hard earned plaudits spilling out of their beer bottles (yes, they have a beer) Tone Deaf was joined by guitarist and resident rocker, Mark Potter (brother of keyboardist, Craig) for a chat from his kitchen ahead of their return to Australia in March.
They’ve been touring on the back of Build A Rocket Boys since the beginning of the last Northern summer and suffice to say, posits Potter, “We’d a very busy year last year… We finished up in the back end of last year. We’re back in the studio at the moment, working on our sixth album as well as the Olympics theme music for the BBC.” Luckily, competing in anything athletic related wasn’t a direct requisition of their involvement but as Mark happily explains, there’s something in traditional Greek festivals for everyone. “Well, it came about through us just being asked, basically by the BBC. As you can imagine we jumped at the opportunity. It’s been certainly different for us to have a brief, so that’s quite interesting. It’s definitely a new experience and quite challenging, really. We’ve really enjoyed it and are obviously very honoured to be working with the BBC and are all quite proud of what we’ve come up with. In an oddly fresh way, it’s inspired us to carry on with our own stuff using some of the techniques we’ve been exploring through it all.”
Opening up further to the world of Elbow, moving on from the mighty successes of recent years, not much is holding back the band in terms of motivation. “With the last record [Build A Rocket Boys] and because of the previous record [Seldom Seen Kid] kind of cleaning up here in the UK we were sort of freed a bit from the pressures of record companies, as had been the case in the past. So, for the first time we were able to go into the studio without worrying about whether or not it was going to sell.”
It would be hard to imagine a band’s inspiration drive could actually escalate as things get easier, but with Elbow there has been an overriding sense of the good times to their later outputs. Here the band are entering a new phase of their lives in every way, but the unit remains a constant. So, what’s changed for Elbow as a band after the last couple of albums met and exceeded each goal put in front of them? “It was the end of a chapter for us… Now, we’re all really excited about making a bigger record. The whole process has changed. We’ve been meeting up in the studio in Salford while [singer, lyricist] Guy has been down in Peter Gabriel’s [of Genesis and umm, Peter Gabriel fame] Real World Studio working on things. Obviously Guy is away writing lyrics while we’re all working on things individually, then we bring it all back together and see what’s come out of it – we’ve not worked like this before and it’s been really quite exciting.”
Elbow are a group built on trust and genuine friendship. Any show will attest to this as singer Guy opines whimsically of his great mates, hidden in the darker corners of the stage. To then find themselves apart at a time of creative progression has surely been a pressing issue.
Does Potter find himself separated from the band then wondering what they might like or what will freak them out? Are new sounds, new guitar approaches something that’s easy to work into the world of Elbow? “Well, interesting you should mention new sounds… It’s certainly something that’s coming quite naturally with the way we’ve approached this recording process. Quite often, we’ll have Guy’s face on the computer via Skype from Real World, so that alone has brought about new sounds. Perhaps we could do a whole album like that one day and never have to see each other,” Mark chirped. “It’s been great. We all have to assess each other’s work… even the lyrics. Guy knows that if he brings something to us and we don’t like it, it isn’t going to go any further.”
Really? An award winning lyricist takes knockbacks about his writing? This is why Elbow are where they are today. True, humbling honesty. With all that, the prospect, as Mark excitedly alludes to, is that the forthcoming output “will be big”. Big drums, big vocals, big guitars. Big. His own AC/DC and Jimi Hendrix musings coupled with a love of John Martyn thrown in with a collective adoration of Talk Talk can only beg keen ears to want more. For all the downtrodden social lament of the last record the joyous cheer of Elbow will always remain. We can’t be sure if this is going to be tested by the IOC for anything untoward, but anythingElbow seem to touch is revered so warmly there can’t be many ails to hold them back.
With Bombay Bicycle Club in tow, Elbow tour Australia this month. If their past shows are anything to go by (and they are) then this will be a night not to be missed.
Elbow image by Andrew Whitton. Copyright © 2012
