Garvey on best form of his career
Raising a pint of Guinness to the crowd, Guy Garvey strolled on to the stage at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in west London on Tuesday night and smiled. It was his first proper gig in the city as a solo artist, the others having all been with Elbow, the band he joined as a teenager in the early Nineties and who’ve risen to arena-level status since they won the Mercury Prize in 2008.
Given the loyalty Garvey has to Elbow, who will be back in the studio next year to work on album number seven, and the newness of his Courting the Squall LP, released barely a month ago, I was expecting a nervous start. But within the first moments of the set’s opener, a slow, tenderly wrought vignette about a church burning down, it was obvious something else was going on. Garvey’s voice filled the auditorium, composed and clear; the six musicians around him combined like a choir, and you could sense a shiver going through the crowd.
What followed, over a 14-song set, was one of the most warmly enjoyable singer-songwriter gigs you could wish to see. Though the label “singersongwriter” is underplaying the contribution of Garvey’s supporting acts: his band, comprising I Am Kloot’s Pete Jobson on guitar, Nathan Sudders of The Whip on bass and drummer Alex Reeves, as well as a three- strong horn section, played a big, characterful role in both the show and the recording of the record.
Garvey has spoken about the liberation he felt in making Courting the Squall. The character of these songs came across more richly on stage than it does on the record: from the Steely Dan-esque funk ballad Harder Edges to the smoky jazz inflections of Electricity and the folk-blues of Broken Bottles and Chandeliers, each one grabbed you by the lapels. Between numbers, Garvey charmed the crowd, praised the musicians, and spoke more than once of his devotion to his Elbow bandmates – one of whom, Mark Potter, joined him on stage for a fine duet of their song Great Expectations.
Garvey looked and sounded like a musician in career-best form, who is joyously making the most of it.