Month: March 2018

We got the train to Manchester in the morning. It rained the entire time we were there, soaking us to the bone as we explored the city centre. We ate in a chain restaurant, Italian I think, before heading to the gig.

That was a few years ago and though it wasn’t the first time I’d seen Elbow live, it was the gig that sits large and raw in my memory. Bawling my eyes out as the lyrics to Scattered Black & Whites ripped my heart wide open, snapshots of childhood memories, my Grandparents, my baby sister, tears streaming down my face.

Maybe it’s because he’s roughly my age with, it seems, a similar propensity for emotion and love and heartbreak, but the lyrics of Guy Garvey have always landed hard and deep. He has the uncanny knack of grabbing a passing emotion, something you feel every day, and capturing it in simple, beautiful prose; “Coming home I feel like I, Designed these buildings I walk by”, tell me that doesn’t strike you when you go back to your hometown.

And that’s the charm of the aptly named Elbow (joints are functional, not glamourous after all) a band that are happy dealing in the humdrum of everyday life, the joy of happiness, the sadness of separation, and even when they do offer the boombastic it is still based on our shared humanities, and still cuts to the quick when needed; from the opening line of Newborn – “I’ll be the corpse in your bathtub. Uselss” – to the closing chords, folding in on top of one another to the cacophonous climax.

More recently, John Grant has started to occupy a similar place, writing with brutal honesty about the fears and insecurities that many people face day in, day out. He occupies a slightly different musical sphere but has the same self-effacing, inclusive natural warmth that Guy Garvey so easily displays on stage. He is equally as fond of the shift from gentle ballad to pulsing electronic throbbing noise, and we got the gamut of his talents in his support slot. Having seen him a couple of years ago at Glastonbury, I can confirm he is definitely one to catch when he returns.

It’d been a couple of years since I’d seen Elbow perform live and it was, as always, a wonderful delight. From the opening blare of the assembled horns of Starlings, through the quiet dark hope of Puncture Repair, to THAT final song that never fails to remind us of our place in this grand thing called humanity.

Elbow have been and have remained consistently good over the 10 years I’ve been seeing them live (which isn’t as easy as it sounds), and whilst they might not be revolutionaries, nor to the musical tastes of some, there is a lot to be said about spending an evening pouring your heart out before having it filled again with compassion and hope, before being hoisted to the rafters as one.

One day like this a year’d see me right, we sang and ohhh how true that is.

“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we have a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses… HIT IT!”

Last weekend saw me driving through to Edinburgh as the last remnants of daylight faded to black, I had already taken my sunglasses off, and I don’t smoke, but the sentiment was the same; (mini) road trip!

The previous evening found me and several hundred other people, wandering the streets of Strathbungo, a suburb in the southside of Glasgow, enjoying the labours of many a budding window artist as we partook of the annual Strathbungo Winter Wanderland. With local roads closed to traffic, we took to the streets to peer over railings and hedgerows to see what was on offer. Most of the streets are three story tenements so there was a LOT of window real estate on offer.

The idea of decorating your windows is simple enough, yet the possibilities are endless and it was fascinating to see how the residents had tackled their part of the project. Decorate one window, decorate all of your windows or in some cases, get together with your neighbours in the rest of the tenement and decorate them all in a giant montage. One buliding had a giant lobster spread across several windows, another a homage to Jimi Hendrix in one window and in the next, with a small speaker perched on the window ledge, was someone playing classic Hendrix tracks live.

Smoke machines, projectors abound, balloons were deployed to excellent effect in some, and yet for me it was the simpler designs that often won out. Definitely one to watch for next year.

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It was with these images still fresh in my mind that I drove through to Edinburgh. I was heading for the Zoo and the Chinese Lantern display to see what all the fuss was about; it’s been scattered through my social media feeds for the past month and I was genuinely excited to see it up close.

On arrival one thing was very clear, I had not fully appreciated the scale of what was on offer. It was a bit odd being in the zoo at night and I completely lost my bearings, but we dutifully followed the sign posts and at every turn were greeted with a variety of animals, some animated, all light up bright against the night sky. All the way round to the central Chinese pavilion, where we were entertained by a display of acrobatics by a Chinese troop. Marvellous!

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I didn’t plan my weekend to be quite so themed but such are the happy coincidences of life. I’m also not quite sure why such simple things are such an attraction but both venues brought the same level of delight to my heart, and a smile to my face, so I guess there’s something to be said for the humble light bulb and it’s modern cousin the LED.

And I wasn’t alone. As I wandered the streets of Strathbungo and zipped around the Zoo, it was the same basic human reaction that was on display. It’s the same you get at firework displays which illicit the same gentle smiles as the night sky explodes into life.

Is it a primitive preference of light over dark that draws us to such things? Do the lights offer a sense of primitive safety over the danger our long dead ancestors must have felt before they discovered fire? is it the simple contrast of colours against blackness that is pleasing delightful to the eye? Or, perhaps, in these days of doom and gloom, of Brexit and Trump and Syrian Wars, these glowing colours offer us a few small moments of wonder and marvel, enough to temporarily soothe our battered spirits and give us pause before the dawn comes again.