Live Review: Elbow, Playwrite

After local five-piece Playwrite’s dramatic set - built around harmonised vocals, pounding bass drums and swirling, orchestral folk - Elbow’s Guy Garvey charges the stage with a drink raised in the air. He may look like any average 40 year old, but he oozes frontman charm and wit and owns us for the next two hours.

The band kick straight into Charge, their current single inspired by Garvey’s love of whiskey. It’s from their latest album, The Take Off And Landing Of Everything - a magnificent title and proof that even this band is prone to hyperbole. Elegant and enormous, the Forum is the perfect venue for it.

The Take Off And Landing Of Everything was released just a few months ago and forms the foundation of a beautifully flowing set that also draws from Elbow’s other five, well-loved albums. The band glisten through Bones Of You and Fly Boy Blue/Lunette is followed by Real Life (Angel) - the song the band wrote to help a mate dance through a broken heart, which Garvey describes as, “Roxy Music with a twist”.

Elbow have been together over 20 years, with the same line-up, and it shows: Their faultless playing matches Garvey’s poeticism perfectly. Sometimes it’s a line as simple as, “I miss your stupid face,” from The Night Will Always Win: a song about missing someone you’re never going to see again that inspires tears, hugs and enormous love for the friends still here. New York Morning is Garvey’s majestic ode to the city he escaped to to write some material for the latest record. Mirrorball and The Birds (both from Elbow’s monumental 2008 work The Seldom Seen Kid) are simply magical.

Garvey starts a crowd sing-along about the internal architecture of the room we are in, the starry ceiling and roman statues. This is bizarre and hilarious and we soon we realise it is a segue into Grounds For Divorce and we’re all already singing along with the chorus. Genius. My Sad Captains is next. For an encore, which Garvey generously dedicates “to you lot”, the band pull out Lippy Kids and their orchestral magnum opus One Day Like This. A joyous crowd of Elbow fans spills out of Forum Theatre on this now magnificent Tuesday night.