Review: Elbow @ MEN Arena, Manchester (From This Is Lancashire)

Review: Elbow @ MEN Arena, Manchester

1:41pm Monday 28th March 2011 in Leisure By Kat Dibbits, Feature writer

For 20 years, Guy Garvey and his band have sung hymns to the rainy streets of Manchester, and to lovers and friends found and lost there.

So it was little surprise that their “homecoming” gig, as part of the tour supporting the band’s latest album Build A Rocket, Boys!, was a triumph.

Unlike many “stadium rock” bands, Elbow don’t rely on bombast to bring an audience to their feet.

From the opening bars of The Birds through the heartbreaking simplicity of Some Riot and The Lonliness of the Tower Crane Driver, Garvey holds the 18,000 strong audience in the palm of his hand.

And when a giant mirrorball descends from the roof for, of course, Mirrorball – maybe the ultimate common man’s lovesong – there is an almost audible collective sigh from around the arena.

That’s not to say that the band don’t know how to rock out, as the stomping, driving rhythms of Grounds For Divorce prove.

And bantering with the audience between songs, Garvey is anything but the maudlin poet his lyrics might suggest him to be.

Raising a toast to the assembled crowd from a drinks cabinet hidden inside a piano, it is clear that the band are enjoying every moment.

New songs Lippy Kids and With Love sit comfortably amongst old favourites.

The Mancunian anthem Station Approach’s chorus of “I need to be in the town where they know what I’m like and don’t mind” suggest both the homesickness of the road and the pure unadulterated joy the band feel playing to a home audience.

And by the time the now-iconic opening bars of One Day Like This start – accompanied by who else but the Halle Youth Choir – there is such a swell of love in the arena for the band that it could carry them home – if they weren’t already there.