Interview: Guy Garvey

Refreshingly unpretentious, sitting casually back in his chair with a Cuba Libre cocktail in his hand, Elbow frontman Guy Garvey is quite clearly at peace with himself and his world.

It has been eighteen months since Elbow last released an album – but with news of a new release scheduled for January, he explains that the band has taken some time out in between recording the album as "all the rest of the band have been having babies".

Far removed from the usual pretence of rock star debauchery, 'the Potter brothers' (lead guitarist Mark and keyboardist Craig) are both settling down to life as new fathers, while Guy Garvey has taken the opportunity to spend time with his own young children.

With a history of creating innovative music, we asked what direction the new album had taken.

"Lyrically in parts it's lighter but in parts it's much darker [than Leaders of the Free World] – it's been a tough couple of years for the band in many ways."

The band were good friends with the musician Brian Clancy who died recently, and Guy describes this as a "nasty period" in the group's lives. However, the energy that surrounds Mr Garvey is such that he deals strongly with these times, often turning a bad thing into a beautiful song.

"I was writing lyrics throughout the healing process so there's some really positive life-affirming stuff. Writing more about how loss affects people positively rather than negatively."

He insists that the result is not a "miserable, moaning record", although it is dark in some places. Like any self-respecting musician, Guy Garvey uses his music as an outlet for emotion as well as everyday observation, and he claims that he 'doesn't know how people cope' without this channel.

Elbow's articulate and intelligent frontman is immensely proud of his Manchester roots and is keen to share his thoughts on the city and its regeneration.

He reveals that he and the band have felt a part of the city's music community since the early days, rehearsing in the same studios as the Stone Roses and the Charlatans, and points out that every Manchester band shops for the essential Wah peddle when they start out. Cheekily referring to Liverpool music's jangliness and commenting on the identity a city gives its sound, he adds, "There's a jangle in the places where a Manc has a Wah."

Although Manchester's regeneration has brought a lot to the area, not least new residents and tourists, he highlights his concern that "a lot more could be done", especially in long-neglected outlying neighbourhoods such as Longsight and Moss Side. While Elbow has been associated more with fellow white indie outfits such as I Am Kloot -for whom Garvey produced an album and without whom he claims Elbow would not exist - the unshaven frontman is vocal in his empathy for less celebrated communities. Passionately, he expresses the need for attention and funding for black music.

"More of the money that's being made in the city needs to go back into helping out, particularly, black Manchester music which hasn't had a look-in. It really needs feeding."

At one point, he criticises the coverage of black British music, which has focused solely on the south. "It all came from Moss Side and it is just unsung because of its negative connotations."

The best part of being in a band is the feeling of being part of "a crew", he says, and he believes the kids in these areas need to be given the space to hang out and create their bands, rather than having government-funded guitar lessons or seminars on rock ‘n’ roll.

Guy Garvey's first band, formed in his school days, began by doing just that, hanging out under the railway arch and being a crew, apparently spending more time bonding with one another than actually making music. The importance the man places on his friends is perhaps as much responsible for Elbow's success as his elegant penmanship.

The band released their Brit Award-nominated debut album Asleep in the Back in 2001, after a disastrous false start with Island Records, and is still going strong amid a succession of deaths, births and other earth-turning events that have been the swansong of many another group of musicians.

An 18 month period may seem a long time by today's standards to spend on one LP but based on the fruitful but very different results of the first three albums, Garvey's fans can no doubt trust him to come up with the goods for a fourth time after the wait. The new album, as yet untitled but possibly to be named Ukula after Elbow's appearance at Ukula Bright Lights festival, is set to be released next January on Polydor Records.

Words: Kate Horstead