Sometime after he sang Great Expectations, about halfway through the set, I leaned towards my friend and said, “I want to have sex with Guy Garvey.” She nodded and said, “I want Guy Garvey to be my dad.” I replied, “Yeah. I want Guy Garvey to be my dad and I want to have sex with him.” This may seem frivolous (or, you know, weird) but I can’t overstate the charisma and talent of Elbow’s lead singer. It is because of Guy Garvey – one arm constantly outstretched towards the audience, Mancunian accent soaring bittersweet across the melody, pitch perfect between-song banter, warmth and good humour oozing from every pore – that I came to overlook the sometimes plodding nature of Elbow’s music and be swept up in the audience’s fervent, devoted fandom. After twenty years together and five albums, including the Mercury Prize winning The Seldom Seen Kid (2008) and their 2011 release Build A Rocket, Boys!, the band has mastered the sweeping, spacious stadium ballad; their ensemble performance is seamless, grand and often transcendently beautiful. But it is Garvey – who persuaded the crowd to sing, ‘God, I had a lovely cheese toastie this morning’ as a warm up round before the all-in stomping glory of Grounds for Divorce, who gathered his band mates around the piano to share a shot before Weather to Fly, who gently insisted that none of us were too cool to clap, who climbed off the stage to shake hands and hug his fans, and gazed around the Palace Theatre with a grateful and beatific grin on his beardy old face – who really lit up the room.
LOVED: Um, Guy Garvey.
HATED: What?
DRANK: Shots around the piano. No, wait…
