Seldom seen kids - not for long

Bury. When you grow up and live in a town called Bury, it's likely your music is going to err on the melancholic. Elbow however, have managed to take melancholy and give it an almighty kick in the buttocks. They've armed it to the teeth with vast stabs of brass, soaring swathes of string and cataclysmic percussion. Guy Garvey leads this charge from the front. A mournful Northern grit is the bedrock of his voice, giving it endless light n' shade; sweeping the crowd up from rain filled graves to sunny skies in the space of a verse.

Garvey is also a highly under-rated wordsmith and an acute observer of the mundane and profane. He describes a Soho doorman as 'Mercifully free of the pressures of grace/St Peter in satin/He's like Buddha with mace/.' (Forget myself) It's this wry humour that permeates a lot of the songs, adding a welcome smile to what is essentially quite gloomy material. His affable banter between songs ensures you warm to both him and the band even more. He's constantly asking us if we're OK, then gently admonishes us when we don't ask him back. At one point he horribly fluffs an intro and calls on the entire audience to boo him. His look of horror and dramatically clutched heart instantly turns every voice in the house to wild cheering, in case he believed for a moment we actually meant it.

This was a great concert and possibly the last time we'll see this band, which has been steadfastly plying their trade for 18 years, play such intimate venues. Songs as big as these need stadiums to contain them. These kids should be seen everywhere.

B