By Killian Laher
Critical darlings Elbow were last on these shores two or 3 years ago, but on their return they have graduated to ‘stadium-rock’ status. Hence the O2 with a capacity of 10,000! How would their somewhat sensitive songs translate?
Bad planning (by me) made us miss almost the entire Villagers set unfortunately, but from the song and a half I heard Conor O’Brien and co sounded a little bombastic in this setting.
Elbow entered the fray to a huge ovation, kicking into The Birds from their most recent album. This and many of the other songs were more rugged than on their albums, ramping up Mark Potter’s guitar on the likes of Neat Little Rows. This was by no means unwelcome as many of Elbow’s songs can be a little on the slow side. Many of the songs were enhanced by a string section at the rear of the stage which filled out the sound.
But the night belonged to frontman Guy Garvey. Sounding more like Peter Gabriel than ever before, he had the crowd eating out of his hand with witty between song banter, and leading the crowd in his own personal masterclass in call and response, even extending to prompting the crowd to whistle in unison during Lippy Kids!
Their slower, downbeat songs like Some Riot and Weather to Fly sounded particularly good live before the crowd-pleasers arrived to send everyone home humming the likes of Grounds for Divorce and One Day Like This.
Sometimes the sound was lost a little in the large venue, particularly when the string section was absent, and the atmosphere was more akin at times to that of a football match than a concert. What next for these guys, large scale outdoor gigs?
Harmony Shark
April 1, 2011
Late for the support? Tsk, tsk, you never perfected the simian stroll…
John
April 2, 2011
Capacity of the O2 when there’s standing on the floor is actually closer to 14,000 – not 10,000 – just saying! Oh and Weather to Fly is ‘downbeat’?? You might want to look at the lyrics again : )
nickers
April 4, 2011
Yes, I think there were more than 10,000 people there, Super gig and the villagers did not fail to impress, I’m not surprised they have a gig in Marley this Summer, which I will no doubt attend. Altogether a fantastic show and for a reasonable price at that, Its a wonder why other artists require such ridiculous high prices for tickets (in the O2) .. well thats a chat for another day ..