The Next Big Thing

They’re being touted as The Next Big Thing, the next Coldplay – but Elbow aren’t getting carried away.

The boys from Bury may be a new name to many people, but the fivesome have in fact been together for almost a decade, and along the way have had their fair share of hype and A&R men supposedly queuing for their signatures.

Friends from schooldays, Guy Garvey, brothers Mark and Craig Potter, Rick Jupp and Pete Turner have seen major labels come and go without a major deal, so Garvey says that’s just why they’re not getting too excited this time around: “To be honest with you, I was talking about this this morning with my girlfriend,” says Guy. “I think because we’ve been together so long and nearly had major record deals at many points during the last ten years, although it’s really pleasing I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t.

“It may not sound true, but it’s enough for us that we’re being paid to write music.” Garvey adds: “I just think there’s a window opened in the market for our kind of music; I think that door was probably opened by Radiohead a few years ago, and you know it’s open for us at the moment which is great and hopefully there’ll be plenty of people out there who’ll appreciate it for what it is.

“A lot of our music is very romantic – some of the songs on this album are like four years old, so you’ve got the best of what we’ve been doing over the past half decade, sort of a healthy balance of romancticism with gritty northern realism – I think the best way of putting it is if it was going to be the soundtrack to a film it’d be Saturday Night Sunday Morning, with Albert Finney.”

“It’s been the same people in the band – there’s never been anyone leaving – so regardless of whether we make it, I know we’re going to be playing together for a while. “Right now we’re at the point where we’ve all trashed our educations so we havent got much f***ing choice!”
Jon Perks, What's On, January 2001