Good morning,
Welcome to your weekly free edition of The New Cue. No money needs to change hands, you can walk right in. But if you’re not a paying subscriber and you can fancy having a little click on that Subscribe Now button below, then go for it, and then enjoy our lovely natter with Elbow’s Guy Garvey safe in the knowledge that you are a ledge.
Before getting to that, though, we have some exciting news about a very special early evening live event on Saturday April 27.
Michael Head of the Pale Fountains, Shack and The Red Elastic Band renown will be playing a special acoustic show downstairs in The Social in Central London for 100 very lucky ticket holders.
You want to go to this. Of course you do. But how? We have a staggered ticket release:
Today, New Cue subscribers have an exclusive 24 hr window to snap up tickets from www.thenewcue.co.uk (not too late to subscribe on the button just below)
Tomorrow, purchasers of Michael Head’s new LP, Loophole, through the Official Store will be able to buy tickets in another 24hr window. Store is here:
Then, on Wednesday, the remaining tickets will be on general sale at www.thenewcue.co.uk
Good luck, and enjoy the edition.
Ted, Niall and Chris
Start The Week With… Guy Garvey
Last week, Elbow released their excellent new record Audio Vertigo. It’s their tenth album and one that reinvents their sound in vibrant new shades, big on imposing grooves, jagged guitar lines and expansive synth hooks, Guy Garvey’s melodies weaving in and around the maze. Lyrically, it taps into some of the sinister vibe of their early work, Garvey at his playful best. Last week, the singer spoke to Niall about turning 50, hangover cures, how domestic bliss inspired him to go darker and the spontaneous act of pageantry that has cast a shadow over the band’s entire career.
Hello Guy.
Hello! How are you, man?
I’m good, thanks. How’s it going?
I’m alright, I’m good yeah.
It’s your release week. What does a release week look like for you?
So I’m doing all the school runs because Rachael [Stirling, the actress and Garvey’s wife] is in rehearsal for a play that opens on release day.
Wow, double whammy.
Totally. It’s always been this thing when we were like, ‘Children?! What if we both want to work at the same time’ and it’s always been, ‘We’ll work it out’. This part came her way and I said, ‘It’ll be fine’. It’s not fine, it’s fucking really hard work! But we’re lucky, we’ve got a wicked nanny. It’s just a bit that you both feel guilty at the same time when there’s nothing to feel guilty for. I used to see my dad one night a week…
It’s exciting too, though?
Yeah, I’m very excited to have a record out that people seem to like. It’s not a given though, I’m 50 years of age.
Ten albums as well, that’s a lot of work.
It is. When I listen to other people’s albums, I think, ‘Fucking hell, they’ve put some hours in here’ but somehow you forgot the hours you’ve put into your own work. Particularly when I was still living in Manchester, we’d just go the studio and work on stuff and every couple of years put a record out, but the hours that went into those things.
I guess if you started analysing how long a record was actually going to take then no-one would ever make one.
Totally, if you could see it stretching out in front of you. But it’s a lovely feeling… in fact, you do get jealous when you hear that somebody has completed a record, you remember the feeling and go, ‘Ah, fucking hell’.
How did you feel when you finished this one?
Really good. The last conversation is always the finer points of the album order. For the last four records, it’s come down to me and Mark [Potter, guitarist] having different, very passionate, views over the placement of one song. There’s an order and we both agree that’s the right order and then there’s one song placement we disagree on and it goes to the vote. And all four times, I’ve lost the vote!
Haha!
Yeah! They’re all slightly wrong!
What song was it?
I can never disclose.
Do you have your own version of Elbow albums that only you listen to, then?
Haha, no, I discipline and re-educate myself.
This record sounds like Elbow but doing new things and walking a bit differently, it’s got a bit more of a swagger.
It’s a bit gnarlier isn’t it? I think maybe it’s middle-aged fuck it.
I’ve got a lot of time for that.
And it’s also to do with our drummer [Alex Reeves, who has been playing with the band since 2017) being a bit closer in. I said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna start the next record, I think you and Craig should get together in London and work up some beats’ and he kind of made this noise like, ‘aaahhhhhhhhuhhhhhh…’ [like a sad dog] and I went, ‘What’s the matter, man?!’ and he said, ‘I just want to be a bit further in, can I be a bit further in?’ and I said, ‘Oh, you want to write?’. He’s aware that could have been his death knell and we put it to the committee of four and everyone was a bit, ‘Oooh, I don’t know, what do you think? You say first…’ and of course it was fucking marvellous. And not only that but he's not just an amazing drummer and a force for good in the universe, he talks to us individually in front of each other in a way that we may have forgotten to talk to each other over the years. Certain people have always needed compliments in one area or another, it doesn’t mean that other people don’t need it too, so he’ll say something really supportive and lovely about something somebody has just done and I’ll think, ‘I think I forget to do that…’.
Like the shorthand between each other has been sanded down to the bare minimum…
Yeah, and therefore maybe missing altogether in some cases. We all know and love each other and we all know we buzz off each other musically, but he’s definitely refreshed the marriage.
Which I imagine is important ten albums in, trying to make sure you’re not getting too comfy.
And it’s right down to the rooms you work in. You look around a room you’ve spent ten years in and you’re like, ‘I think we should change the fucking curtains.’ It becomes a little like with every new album, ‘What social experiment shall we try this time?’ and it always throws something new up. The thing I’ve found more satisfying on this album, you can hear me capering in the writing process at the beginning of Balu [it’s preceded by a recording of Guy getting excited about a new riff, presented on the record as a 26-second snippet titled Where Is It?) and that level of buzziness was all the way through it.
It’s why the lads picked that snippet, they picked it in my absence and when I heard it, they’d forgotten they’d put it in on and played it in the room and it was on there and I was like, ‘Oh!’ and they all looked at me a bit guiltily and a bit giddy. I thought, ‘Oh they’re taking the piss’ and said, ‘Play it for me again’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, but it’s adorable’. They were taking the piss but it’s cute, so fuck it.
It's a nice peak behind the curtain, a little bit like the start of Radiohead’s 2+2=5.
Yeah, and you can tell it’s real because it’s not cool. There’s one on a Prodigy record isn’t there?
Yeah, at the start of Poison, a phone rings for Liam and he says ‘Fuck sake, trying to write this fuckin’ tune man’.
Yeah, I always thought that was bollocks! It always felt a bit staged, ‘Err, why’s the phone in the microphone booth?!’… Bullshit!
Haha. What did you find yourself writing about on this record? The words a little more playful and darker on this one, there’s a bit of a bite to them.
It’s basically not domestic bliss. The last song is very sweet to my son Jack, aspirations for him and bits of my childhood, imagining him growing up when I did, weirdly.
But the rest of them, I’m drawing on everything. I’m kind of laughing at the trope of teenage suicide on Lover’s Leap. I think it’s pretty dark, the idea of teenagers killing themselves for love and I’ve always found spontaneously occurring myths to be dark and weird.
What lyric are you proudest of on there?
Not to be a cock, but I’m proud of quite a few. I suppose “I haven’t paid for cabs or beers or met a cunt in 20 years” is one of my favourites.
What made you want to go a bit darker this time?
You’ve just flicked a memory for me. I had some counselling, going back 15 years, for stage fright but it ended up encompassing a load of other stuff. Right at the end of the session, she was really helpful, a fucking brilliant woman, and then we decided we’d done it, she admitted she was a fan of the first album and she said, ‘Why have you never written another song like Bitten By The Tailfly?’.
It’s a song about a predatory man in a nightclub and it’s as dark as it can be, really dark. She said, ‘Why didn’t you continue in that vein?’. I pointed out that there was a song called I’ve Got Your Number on the second album which is easily as dark but a bit shorter, and then she’s right, it kind of petered out. I mean, I’ve never thought ‘This one will be the dark album!’. We just didn’t pursue that and that comes down to the kind of music we were writing, it wasn’t evoking darkness, it wasn’t making me want to go there. I think possibly on this record, there’s that fork in the road all the way back in 2001, like ‘Why didn’t I pursue the dark thoughts?’, and at the same time I don’t really want to write about domestic bliss and I’ve got this whole life full of toxic relationships and hedonism to draw on and exaggerate.
And that seems much more fun.
Exactly, it’s more fun. And the word fun came up a lot making the record, so I think it’s a little bit of that.
You turned 50 a few weeks ago. What did you do to celebrate?
As I do every birthday, I went to breakfast with Peter Jobson [musician and former I Am Kloot member] and he gave me a train ticket and we went to Manchester, went to [famous Manchester bar] Big Hands, got absolutely twatted and came back the following day drinking all the way. It was a two-day bender. The problem with doing it twice a year, on his birthday and my birthday, is you notice in literal days how much longer it takes to recover.
What’s your go-to hangover cure?
Loads and loads of really bad food, almost like dropping anchor, make sure you’re incapable of moving even if you wanted to. Drink loads of tea to counteract the salt and then the hangover becomes more about the gut than your head. And if you’re not in a position to constantly masticate, maybe masturbate, just for little two-minute windows from the pain. Hahaha!
What’s been the most Spinal Tap thing that’s ever happened to you?
OK. When we were 19/20, Bury council sent us to France on an exchange festival. This meant that all the towns in the world twinned with the French town of Angoulême sent a contingency to France and Bury’s contingency was us. At the time, we were a shit funk band. We went over and nobody could speak French and we were staying in a youth hostel and there were people from all over the world and the town was very excited. I think we were one of two or three rock acts. There was a guy from Canada who’d spent ten years building his own instrument, which was part-bass guitar, part-Celtic harp, part-sitar, part-guitar and he was called Neki. He could only play two songs on it cos it was so fucking complicated. And then there was a Swedish band whose name translated meant The Worst Bird Of Prey. And we were called Mr Soft, after the recently bereaved Steve Harley.
We didn’t know what we were doing because we couldn’t speak French and everybody was told that there was going to be some kind of parade and we’ll have lunch or whatever but there was a bit in the middle that none of us got – we were led after this long parade into a square with thousands of townsfolk and one-by-one every country did a pageant and we hadn’t prepared anything and we didn’t have our instruments. It started on our left and went round clockwise and we had literally 20 minutes to come up with some kind of pageant. The Africans had ten little children dancing in formation, singing and clapping, the Germans had a puppet show, etc, and it was just us five with a Union Jack and we were going, ‘Just make something up, we’ll have to do something a cappella, ‘What do you mean a cappella?!’, we’ll clap, we’ll just do something, it’s coming round!’. So we all started clapping and the crowd hushed and then Pott went [makes bugle sound] ‘Dudud dudu!’ and we all pissed ourselves laughing. I started shouting, ‘That’s it, that’s it!’, so they moved on. To this day, we walk through a room and go ‘Dudud dudu!’.
ND