{"id":4468,"date":"2025-08-13T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/elbow-keeps-going-til-the-wheels-fall-off\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T15:00:00","slug":"elbow-keeps-going-til-the-wheels-fall-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/elbow-keeps-going-til-the-wheels-fall-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Elbow Keeps Going \u2018Til the Wheels Fall Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/Main-Album-Press-Shot-Credit-Peter-Neill.jpg\" width=\"\" height=\"\" alt=\"Elbow. (Credit: Peter Neill)\"><\/figure>\n<p>The irony isn\u2019t lost on Guy Garvey that he had to get good and drunk to write a song called \u201cSober.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIsn\u2019t it perverse?\u201d he says with a chuckle. The Manchester band first came up with the track\u2019s taut, bass-driven groove shortly after Alex Reeves (The Ting Tings, Bat For Lashes) started playing drums for them in 2016. But the song wasn\u2019t completed and released until earlier this year, partly because Garvey found it a challenge to write lyrics that went with the music.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More from Spin:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/radiohead-salute-hail-to-the-thief-with-live-collection\/\">Radiohead Salutes \u2018Hail To The Thief\u2019 With Live Collection<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/chrissie-hynde-duets-album\/\">Chrissie Hynde Drafts Dave Gahan, Brandon Flowers For Duets LP<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<li>\n\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2025\/08\/daron-malakian-is-finally-free\/\">\u00a0Daron Malakian: \u2018I\u2019m Blessed to Have Both Scars and System\u2019<\/a>\n\t\t<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u201cIt was so far out for the way we sounded back then that I didn\u2019t know what to do with it,\u201d says Garvey, 51, in a Zoom conversation on a recent Tuesday\u2014mid-afternoon for him in the U.K., late morning for me in America. \u201cI couldn\u2019t come up with anything for the tune. And so, something I\u2019ve done a few times over the years, I went down to my writing room in Brixton in the dead of night, knowing nobody would be there, literally zero percent chance of anybody hearing me. And then I got drunk as fuck and yelled nonsense, and came back the following day and sifted through it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSober\u201d wound up as the rousing closing track on <em>Audio Vertigo Echo<\/em>, an EP released in June. Those four songs were also appended to a deluxe edition of the band\u2019s tenth full-length <em>Audio Vertigo<\/em>, which was first released in 2024. \u201cThere\u2019s really nothing more satisfying than listening to the album straight into the EP,\u201d the gregarious singer says. \u201cBecause that\u2019s how the EP was written, as a continuation of the record.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>One song on the EP, \u201cDis-Graceland 463-465 Bury New Road,\u201d is about Bryan Glancy, a friend of Garvey\u2019s whose 2006 death inspired Elbow\u2019s most beloved album, 2008\u2019s <em>The Seldom Seen Kid<\/em>. \u201cEvery time I think I\u2019ve stopped writing about Bryan, another one pops along,\u201d he says. \u201cI suppose Bryan\u2019s death was the first time I felt grief, so maybe when I\u2019m writing about him, I\u2019m writing about that part of life. I mean, it certainly makes me really, really appreciate life.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"712\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2152973314.jpg\" alt=\"Craig Potter, Guy Garvey, Mark Potter, Pete Turner, and Alex Reeves of Elbow perform the inaugural live show at Co-op Live on May 14, 2024 in Manchester, England. (Credit: Shirlaine Forrest\/WireImage)\" class=\"wp-image-470429\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2152973314.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2152973314-340x202.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2152973314-768x456.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2152973314-498x295.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Craig Potter, Guy Garvey, Mark Potter, Pete Turner, and Alex Reeves of Elbow perform the inaugural live show at Co-op Live on May 14, 2024 in Manchester, England. (Credit: Shirlaine Forrest\/WireImage)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><em>Audio Vertigo<\/em> is the fourth Elbow album that Reeves has drummed on, but it marked his first album as an official band member and co-writer, rather than a session musician. \u201cBringing Al into the band is a massive thing, it\u2019s a huge change of dynamic, and he\u2019s just endlessly enthusiastic, and so fuckin\u2019 talented,\u201d Garvey says. \u201cHe\u2019s introduced us to some great music that we didn\u2019t really know about or hadn\u2019t appreciated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Garvey has been playing with three of his bandmates, Pete Turner and brothers Craig and Mark Potter, since they were teenagers in the early \u201990s, when their band was briefly known as Mr. Soft. Coming of age in Greater Manchester when the area was a musical hotbed was a powerful formative experience for Garvey and his bandmates. \u201cI met three of the Smiths before I was 18, and Mark delivered a pizza to the Stone Roses,\u201d Garvey says. \u201cDoves took us on our first U.S. and U.K. tour and bigged us up. Everybody looks after everybody else, and everybody\u2019s crew has crewed with everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Another musical hero who\u2019s become part of Garvey\u2019s life is Peter Gabriel. \u201cLove him to bits, feels like an older brother,\u201d Garvey says. Gabriel covered the <em>Seldom Seen Kid<\/em> track \u201cMirrorball\u201d on his 2010 album <em>Scratch My Back<\/em>, and its 2013 sister album <em>And I\u2019ll Scratch Yours<\/em> featured Elbow reciprocating with a cover of Gabriel\u2019s \u201cMercy Street.\u201d \u201cHe didn\u2019t tell me that he was covering \u2018Mirrorball,\u2019 I just got an email from him and there\u2019s a beautifully orchestrated version of the song. I was in pieces by the end of it, it was the most flattering thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Garvey was credited for guitar and vocals on Elbow\u2019s early albums, and just vocals on more recent efforts, but he says that doesn\u2019t really reflect a change in how he contributes to the band\u2019s creative process. \u201cI just stopped crediting myself with any little bits of guitar. We just decided it was kind of confusing to say I played guitar on that one, I played synthesizer on this one. It\u2019s like, yeah, but who\u2019s chief of synthesizer? It\u2019s Craig,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t play enough guitar, I certainly write guitar lines for Mark. Sometimes I\u2019ll sing something at him, and that\u2019s how the thing will get written, but he\u2019s chief of guitars.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image aligncenter size-full\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"1351\" src=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223843571.jpg\" alt=\"Guy Garvey performs onstage during a concert at St Nicholas Park on July 06, 2025 in Warwick, England. (Credit: Steve Thorne\/Redferns)\" class=\"wp-image-470430\" srcset=\"https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223843571.jpg 900w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223843571-340x510.jpg 340w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223843571-768x1153.jpg 768w, https:\/\/static.spin.com\/files\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2223843571-498x748.jpg 498w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\"><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Guy Garvey performs onstage during a concert at St Nicholas Park on July 06, 2025 in Warwick, England. (Credit: Steve Thorne\/Redferns)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In the U.K., where <em>Audio Vertigo<\/em> was Elbow\u2019s fourth No. 1 album, the band headlines arenas. They never broke big in the U.S., however, reaching their highest <em>Billboard<\/em> 200 peak of No. 83 for 2014\u2019s <em>The Take Off and Landing of Everything<\/em>. But Elbow still makes an occasional trek to see their American fans in decidedly more intimate venues like First Avenue in Minneapolis or the 9:30 Club in Washington, D.C., as they\u2019ll do this fall. \u201cPlayin\u2019 the smaller rooms is really healthy,\u201d says Garvey, noting that those shows will still feature the expanded nine-piece lineup that helps bring the more elaborate brass and string arrangements of their later albums to life onstage.<\/p>\n<p>The frontman hosts a weekly BBC radio show, <em>Guy Garvey\u2019s Finest Hour<\/em>, and has other possible projects on the horizon, including some sort of stage musical he \u201ccan\u2019t talk about too much\u201d that bears a connection to the group\u2019s 2021 album <em>Flying Dream 1<\/em>. While most bands that have been making albums for a quarter century tend to slow down their output, Elbow has never failed to release an album every two or three years since their 2001 debut <em>Asleep in the Back<\/em>. And Garvey expects that spending a few weeks on a bus will help spark ideas for the band\u2019s next chapter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe stuff that you write on the road is magic, because years following that, you\u2019ll be like, \u2018Oh fuck, I came up with that guitar part in Georgia,\u2019 y\u2019know? These wonderful things, these are part of the extraordinary job we have,\u201d he says. \u201cWhat\u2019s lovely about the boys in Elbow is they\u2019ve mellowed into their best selves but they are more up for trying stuff than perhaps they ever have been. It\u2019s like, \u2018Let\u2019s keep going \u2019til the wheels fall off, and let\u2019s have fun doing it.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>Elbow\u2019s North American tour kicks off on 9\/26 in D.C. Visit their site for tour dates and tickets: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/elbow.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>https:\/\/elbow.co.uk<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spin.com\/2021\/07\/the-greatest-rock-stars-of-all-time\/?utm_source=yahoo&amp;utm_medium=bottomlink&amp;utm_campaign=yahoolink\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The irony isn\u2019t lost on Guy Garvey that he had to get good and drunk to write a song called \u201cSober.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cIsn\u2019t it perverse?\u201d he says with a chuckle. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3321,31,3322,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-elbow","category-features","category-guy-garvey","category-pushly"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4468\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musictechohio.online\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}