After Bloc Party’s high voltage performance at Bristol Sounds 2019 the previous evening, the bar had been set pretty high by the time indie veterans Elbow took to the amphitheatre stage on Saturday night.
This was the first time the Greater Manchester band had performed in the city since 2017’s appearance at the Downs Festival, a show many still remember as much for the streaker dancing on stage with frontman Guy Garvey as the music itself.
Despite the scorching temperatures during the day, thankfully nobody felt the urge to strip off and scale the security fences this time, which left it down to the band to expose themselves purely through their music.
Part of a summer-long tour of festivals, Elbow find themselves in that hinterland between albums - their last release was Little Fictions two years ago - and although they did slip in one new song (the highly promising Empires), this was always going to be something of a greatest hits set.
Thick-set with a grey beard covering his lantern jaw, Garvey looks older than his 45 years and cuts an unlikely figure as a pop star with his hangdog demeanour but he is well loved by the fans and he had them eating out of his hands from the outset.
Elbow have built a successful career with their expansive, arena-filling anthems about life’s trials and tribulations and no more so than The Bones of You and Magnificent (She Says), which saw Garvey conducting the 4,500 fans through a mass singalong illuminated by the light of hundreds of smartphones held aloft in the dusky light.
The anthemic singalongs kept on coming with My Sad Captains, its refrain of ‘what a perfect waste of time’ echoing across the harbourside, which was by now under the cover of darkness as a cold wind whipped around the amphitheatre.
Gigs at the Canons Marsh always seem to start in first gear when it’s still light and accelerate once darkness falls and this was no exception and this slow-burning set suddenly seemed to ignite with crowd-pleasers Station Approach, Kindling and The Birds.
At one point I even spotted actor Matthew Horne (Gavin from Gavin & Stacey) shoulder-to-shoulder with Elbow fans at the front and singing along at the top of his voice in between having selfies with fans of his own.
But it was One Day Like This and Grounds For Divorce that generated the most vociferous pints-in-the-air singalongs of the evening, both in the arena and in the distance as ticketless fans on the other side of the water, their legs dangling over the edge of the quayside, swayed to the music next to the shadows of the cranes.
It may have clashed with Glastonbury but Bristol Sounds 2019 certainly proved that you don’t have to spend your weekend in a muddy Somerset field to see some of the best bands around.
And you can still be home in time for a shower and bed long before midnight, something I’m sure even new dad Guy Garvey would appreciate.
SET LIST:
Fly Boy Blue/Lunette
The Bones of You
Magnificent (She Says)
Mirrorball
Little Fictions
My Sad Captains
Empires
Station Approach
Kindling
The Birds
Lippy Kids
One Day Divorce
