Arms and the man

Tagged as part of the current Nu-prog/NAM movement and lumped in with the likes of Starsailor and Doves, Lancashire quintet Elbow certainly couldn’t be accused of jumping on the bandwagon. Named after a line in Dennis Potter’s play The Singing Detective where he describes the elbow as the “most sensuous part of the body,” Elbow have been around in one form or another for the best part of a decade. “We’ve been writing this kind of music for ages, it just seems like it’s become more fashionable at the moment,” offers singer/guitarist Guy Garvey. “For about six years people were saying we were ‘soft’. Then we wrote commercial bullshit and it got us nowhere. It’s only when we decided to go back to what we wanted to do that we started to be noticed.

Garvey cites John Martyn, Spiritualized, Leonard Cohen, Smashing Pumpkins and Late Talk Talk as just some of the bands influences. Their ecstatically received debut Asleep In The Back, suggests that it’s music for the head rather than the feet.

“It’s probably true that you can’t really dance to any of our stuff,” Garvey offers. “We tend to get people nodding appreciatively at our gigs which seems to be the thing. Music journalists are putting it under one banner, this New Acoustic Movement thing which doesn’t really exist in any meaningful sense. If there’s anything we have in common it’s the fact that we’re all friends. We’re big mates with Doves, Badly Drawn Boy, Starsailor. We meet them all the time and we listen to each other’s music. “

Asleep In The Back had a prolonged gestation period caused partly by the takeover of their original label Island by Universal, who promptly dropped the band just as the album was due to come out.

“It was originally due to be released in January 2000, about a month before the Coldplay album came out,” says Garvey. “Then it was shelved and we had to wait a long time to get the album back. At the time it was crushing to us but in hindsight I think it became a better album because of the delay. It was originally made under pressure, when we knew our days were numbered with Island. It was a very bad version of the record that we eventually released. We replaced about half the material. There were good songs on it, it’s just that it was a very heavy record.”

Since the album’s release the band who have built a strong live following, have been out on the road. This included a foray into the US where they recently performed at the SXSW music conference in Austin, Texas supporting the Black Crowes – surely some mistake there? “Well, I wasn’t a fan of theirs before we played with them and I’m less so after seeing them live,” says Garvey. “The crowd were great though. We didn’t think they’d get us, there was quite a few good ‘ole boys there. Imagine an Oprah Winfrey audience with the hats on. Pete our bass player was a bit worried being black. But they got into us.”

Asleep In The Back is out now on V2