Elbow play double-header at Usher Hall

IT IS a massive step forward for us. We had that feeling that was in the room when we were making The Seldom Seen Kid. 'It's the sound of four people who love what they do and each other'-Elbow's Mark Potter is talking about the recording of their seventh studio album, Little Fictions.
ELBOWELBOW
ELBOW

Then, explaining the origins of their latest album singer Guy Garvey reveals, “It started with a week around the fire in a frozen Scotland in January and ended with a sleepless three day stint in Salford in November.

“In between, truly amazing things happened. It’s all here.”

Those amazing thing will be evident for all to hear when Elbow check into the Usher Hall on Sunday for the first of two concerts - the second is the following night - to promote their new album, which has already reached No 1 in the UK charts.

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The departure of drummer Richard Jupp prior to writing and recording Little Fictions meant that early sessions were characterised by new approaches to rhythm, with the band utilising percussive noises, sampling and loops to build tracks.

The grooves that run through much of the album, from the go-go beats of Gentle Storm through the jagged trip hop of Kindling to the soulful Firebrand & Angel represent both the band’s widest musical palette and a newfound sense of experimentation borne from both necessity and desire. That desire fuelled the title track, an eight minute piece that is epic without at any point feeling excessive.

“The songs worked in a very natural way from the beginning. We wanted them to work in a stripped down form and anything that wasn’t working was set aside, the album flowed really naturally,” says Craig Potter, who also produced the album.

Described as an upbeat album. Little Fictions has also been called “emphatically a band album” and having written individually for its chart-topping predecessor The Take Off and Landing of Everything, sessions this time were collective affairs.

Hear the results at the Usher Hall.

Elbow, Usher Hall, Lothian Road, Sunday and Monday, 7pm, £38.50-£44, 0131-228 1155