Review: Giants of All Sizes, Elbow

Brexit and the highs and lows of Guy Garvey's life loom large in Elbow's darkest and most thrilling album yet, writes Ed Power.

Cometh the hour, cometh the band named after that unglamorous joint in the middle of your arm.

Elbow were always the awkward outsiders in the anthemic rock club.

But now, with Britain roiling from Brexit and singer Guy Garvey processing the death his father, there is a sense the stakes are higher than ever. And they’ve gone for it with a record that makes little secret of its ambition to take on the grand themes of the day.

Brexit has already impacted on British music – see Slowthai dashing around at the Mercurys waving an effigy of Boris Johnson’s head and host Lauren Laverne stating that he was representing “his own views”.

At 45, Garvey’s head-waving days are possibly behind him– feel free to prove us wrong, Guy – but in its way Giants Of All Sizes is no less hard hitting than Slowthai and his stunt.

Opener Dexter and Sinister is a striking start. It functions both as a plunge into Garvey’s own confused id – his father died and his son were born within a relatively short period – and also an exploration of the existential divides threatening to pull Britain apart.

All that and it’s lovely to listen too, with Jesca Hoop chiming in as the band plunge into a free-wheeling fugue state.

The theme of death and life is explored once more on Weightless. Garvey has never sounded more overwhelmed. But the bleakness is shot through with hope as the singer makes peace with middle age and the dramas bound up in it.

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Giants Of All Sizes also marks a welcome return of the more experimental Elbow of the early 2000s (a side they abandoned after the Seldom Seen Kid won the 2007 Mercury).

It’s there in White Noise White Heat – a yell of despair that sounds like a cousin third removed to the beloved hit Grounds For Divorce. It’s fantastic – and there’s much more like it on the Elbow’s darkest, most thrilling album yet.