Big Brother Watching
With a musical lineage that can be traced back to 1990, the UK’s Elbow have been peddling their wares for close on two decades. But it’s only been in the last year or two that the five-piece from Manchester have enjoyed mainstream support, despite a back catalogue of work that is the equal of any of their British rock peers.

Winning last year’s Mercury Prize for the brilliant ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ LP, Elbow are at the top of their game, though keyboardist/producer Craig Potter says the group aren’t getting too carried away.

“It’s a slow build still. Yeah, we’ve got some success because we won the Mercury Prize and it gave us a lot of attention and sold us - probably in the end when you compare it to our other sales - about double the amount of records we’d normally have sold. It’s great to be recognised.

“The difference between this album and the last one, ‘Leaders of the Free World’, was that hardly anyone knew it was out, which was frustrating for us because we felt like it was one of our best albums - but it’s good now that people will go back and buy it. But this new album has been fantastic, we’ve just been nominated for three Brit Awards and we won the South Bank Show awards over here a few days ago. There’s always something happening, which keeps the band going. It’s been the best year for us, it’s been an amazing year.”

Continuing with the outfit’s rise up the musical ladder has been the coverage they’ve received in the entertainment and sporting worlds. Their track ‘Grounds for Divorce’ - lifted off ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ record - was used in the trailer for the Coen Brothers’ ‘Burn After Reading’ as well as the most recent ‘Top Gear’ series. While their song ‘One Day Like This’ was featured in BBC’s coverage of the Beijing Olympic Games as well as the UK’s ‘Big Brother 9’.

“You quite often hear bands used all the time in TVland and I think there’s a fine line that you don’t want to cross if you’re used too much. I think the only one we weren’t too keen on was the ‘Big Brother’ montage at the end of the final show. But that was the only one where we were a bit cringing but everything else has been great. It’s nice to hear your song pop up on telly every now and then.”

Currently enjoying the fruits of ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’ the band aren’t standing still on this release, with work already beginning on Elbow record number five.

“It has. We are starting to write it now. We’ve all been really busy with the success of ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. But we’re doing writing whenever we can and we’re going up to an island off the west coast of Scotland where we’ve done some writing before. We’re going to go up there; a friend of ours has a converted church and we’re going to camp out for a good week or two and that’ll be the first serious bit of writing for the next Elbow album.”

Penning a fresh batch of tunes is never an easy task. But Craig admits there are certain songs that write themselves, so to speak.

“There are songs that suddenly come together and you’re like, ‘wait a minute, that could do really well’. My favourite songs on any of our albums are never the singles. But sometimes you just take a step back and think ‘that came together really easy, it just seems like something that could become a classic’. As a songwriter, you’re always looking out for it and obviously other people outside of the band are always looking for the singles. The one that came together, that we didn’t play around with hardly at all from the initial idea to the initial recording was ‘...Tower Crane Driver’ off ‘The Seldom Seen Kid’. It was great from the beginning, no one had any doubts and you do get tracks like that now and again.”

Elbow will be joined by The Killers, Snow Patrol, Kaiser Chiefs, Duffy, Madness, The Human League, The Do and many more when V Festival touches down at the Avica Resort, Gold Coast Sunday March 29. For more info, visit www.vfestival.com.au Elbow also play a Brisbane side show at the Tivoli March 31.