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Their time has come: Guy Garvey (centre) and his band Elbow step up to accept the £20,000 prize at the award ceremony this week

Glasto girl: tracks by Laura Marling from this year’s festival will be available on the BBC's download site

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ALL POWER TO THEIR ELBOW

I don't think the Mercury Music Prize has ever been less controversial. Though the bookies were convinced that this week's £20,000 award was heading to the 4-6 favourite, dubstep recluse Burial, the band that everybody wanted to win was Bury quintet Elbow.

Who could fail to warm to the genuine gratitude in singer Guy Garvey's acceptance speech? “I know I'm supposed to be cool and say something coy, but it's literally the best thing that's ever happened to us,” he said. “You could look at it in the same way as certain Bedouin tribes look at a bowl of milk. Something that doesn't occur very often, but tastes all the sweeter for that.”

Unshaven, drunk and getting on a bit, he was thrilled to have an evening on top after 18 years of struggling towards a mild kind of success with his band. For Elbow, the term “critically acclaimed” had become a particularly backhanded compliment, driving home the fact that the public remained largely indifferent to a group we critics had pegged as the next Radiohead.
Their Mercury-winning album, The Seldom Seen Kid, is their fourth, and their first to enter the top five on its release in March. Already their most successful release, since this week's news, Amazon is now reporting a sales increase of 260 per cent. So why has it taken them so long to sell a decent number of records?

First, there was a fairly typical gestation period as Garvey formed a band with his mates as teenagers, calling themselves Mr Soft, then Soft, and finally Elbow. But mainly it's the machinations of Britain's major label system that have handicapped them. Signed by Island in the late Nineties they recorded a debut album, but when Island was taken over by Universal, Elbow were dropped without it being released.
EMI briefly picked them up before changing its mind, indie label Uglyman released a couple of EPs, and they finally ended up on Richard Branson's V2 where they produced their first three albums — Asleep in the Back (2001), Cast of Thousands (2003) and Leaders of the Free World (2005). Then V2 sank and Elbow were homeless once more, before arriving at their current base on Fiction — ironically an arm of Universal, the label that ditched them in the first place.

All of this upheaval never harmed the music, however. Marvellous though it is, The Seldom Seen Kid is matched by numerous songs from earlier works.

Newcomers wishing to cherry-pick Elbow's best moments to download would be advised to start with Newborn from Asleep in the Back. A black ballad that builds from acoustic beginnings to a psychedelic freakout over seven-and-a-half minutes, it most strikingly demonstrates Garvey's way with vivid imagery. Who else would dare begin a love song with the line “I'll be the corpse in your bath tub”?

From the same album, Any Day Now's organ and dominant drums shows a talent for stately grooves, and Don't Mix Your Drinks has something of Leonard Cohen in its minimal backing and whispered lines. Asleep in the Back was also nominated for the Mercury but lost out to PJ Harvey.

The next album showed a widening of ambition, with Grace Under Pressure featuring a recording of thousands of Glastonbury-goers singing the vast chorus. Garvey continued to shine lyrically, threatening to “pull my ribs apart and let the sun inside” on Ribcage and watching “insects like a neon choir” on Switching Off, possibly Elbow's loveliest ballad to date.

Some political anger emerged on the growling title track of Leaders of the Free World, but Garvey remained predominantly the lovesick pub poet, capable of conveying real emotion in even the simplest lines (“You little sod, I love your eyes” on the grandiose opener, Station Approach). Melodies stayed strong, too — Forget Myself still possesses the band's catchiest chorus.

The Seldom Seen Kid is now likely to be accepted as Elbow's best album, though it doesn't hugely advance their sound or depart from what has gone before. There are more great lines (“I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce” on a bluesy stomper, Grounds for Divorce), more sweeping choruses (One Day Like This) and more shimmering balladry (Starlings, The Bones of You). While Elbow haven't changed, the musical climate has, finally producing the right conditions for this to be their moment. Guy Garvey is far from the only one thinking it's about time.

NEW ON THE NET

Respected London indie label Wichita, home of Bloc Party and The Cribs, is also being supremely generous this week, offering 15 tracks by its artists for nothing at www.wichita-recordings.com/freemusic. Pick up songs by hot talents including Conor Oberst, The Dodos and Simian Mobile Disco.

Ever innovative when it comes to all things internet, old rockers Marillion this week become the first band to make their new album available with their blessing on peer-to-peer software — the method by which so much music is downloaded illegally. The band hope those who pick up Happiness Is the Road for nothing will also take them up on offers to buy gig tickets.

All those with a fierce aversion to all things Apple will be pleased that new legal downloading options are on the horizon. The BBC has just announced plans for a music download site early next year, which will make an archive available of tracks from its broadcasts, including Peel Sessions, Glastonbury coverage and The Old Grey Whistle Test. And next month the UK becomes the first place in the world to play with Nokia's Comes With Music service, which offers unlimited downloads bundled in with the cost of its 5310 handset. It's not half the looker the iPhone is, but at least it's an alternative.

 

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