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Elbow review – a charged night of insatiable yearning and rollicking laments

Beaming, big-hearted and benevolent, Guy Garvey charms with stately songs of heartbreak, unafraid of uneven time signatures and heavy-metal thud

Elbow have always been too itchy and antsy a group to settle for mere prettiness, and their recent album, Audio Vertigo, their fourth to top the UK chart, returned to more challenging musical terrain. Garvey increasingly resembles a rather rumpled Stephen Fry, yet his understated demeanour paradoxically emphasises the insatiable yearning of this charged, subtle music that fills arenas. Elbow encore with the paean to the precocity of adolescence that is Lippy Kids, then close with their signature tune, the life-affirming One Day Like This, a song that could be a millstone around their necks were it not so exquisitely sumptuous.

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