Fugitive Motel by Elbow

What artist or band changed your music taste forever? Pick your favorite song of theirs.

From heavier rock and dance music as my ‘chosen’ genres, I stumbled into this band after catching them performing at Glastonbury in 2004 (on TV, it was a couple of years before I made it to that festival where I also saw them live).

I had an appreciation of lyric and melody built up through my parents record collections, and on into my own but it was heavily skewed towards indie rock, heavy rock, metal, and dance music/electronica. There was some pop in there too but very little song writing driven artists/bands.

This song, and the performance, captivated me so much so that I bought the album the next day (thank you FOPP), and immersed myself in it, grabbing their previous album and losing myself in that too shortly after. For a while it was all Elbow as I listened to the noise, the gentle choruses, the clever word play, the use of instruments. Their 3rd album cemented their place in my heart and they’ve never left.

The band came to Glasgow shortly after that, as part of the release of their 4th album and hearing some of the songs live made it all the richer. It was in the, now gone, ABC in Glasgow standing under a huge Mirrorball.

Picking one song is almost impossible – Station Approach, Newborn, Red, Tower Crane Driver – so I guess I’ll go with the song that started it all.