Here for the cheers: Guy Garvey leading Elbow at Live At York Museum Gardens on Thursday night. Picture: Andy Hughes
NOT all eyes are on Cardiff Principality Stadium for the “rock’n’roll reunion of the century”. York has its own fiesta of outdoor delights this week: Elbow on Thursday, Nile Rodgers and CHIC on Friday, Richard Hawley tonight and the inaugural York Comedy Festival in a Sunday fun-day finale.
Welcome to Leeds promoters Futuresound Group’s second summer of Live At York Museum Gardens, where one big change from Shed Seven’s 30th anniversary revels last summer greets you on arrival.
The stage has moved: no longer in front of the Yorkshire Museum, from where the slope down to the Ouse made viewing more difficult from the back. Now, it is sited against the backdrop of the St Mary’s Abbey ruins, as was the custom with the four-yearly cycle of the York Mystery Plays from their revival for the 1951 Festival of Britain.
And, on the evidence of your 5ft 7ins reviewer’s (disad)vantage point for the first three songs, viewing was still elusive from the rear ranks of a sold-out 4,000 crowd. A case of more heads than Elbow as Starlings, 2024 album Audio Vertigo’s best song, Lovers’ Leap, and new number Adriana Again passed out of sight.
Elbow room only: Thursday’s packed crowd in York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes
One chap cannily resorted to placing his phone camera above his head to watch. Meanwhile, determined to avoid a feeling of “what an imperfect waste of time”, a request to move to the seating by the museum was very kindly accommodated by event staff, facilitating the full picture for this review from Station Approach onwards: now Elbow could “be everything to me tonight” in the Bury band’s “34th year together” .
You may disagree, but Station Approach, from 2005’s Leaders Of The Free World, is still Guy Garvey’s finest lyric, his best distillation of life and love in a northern town. He is up there with Jarvis Cocker as the north’s supreme gift of the gab as a frontman too, his wit as dry as this summer’s grass.
He reaches regularly for “beautiful”: “beautiful” singalongs; “beautiful night”, “beautiful historic city”, then teases York by suggesting that this “history”, the Jorvik past, the 10th century abbey ruins, are nothing but manufactured tourist attractions, constructed in 1962, like a northern Milton Keynes.
Later he would make a joke of his singing causing a temporary sound malfunction: “I like to think I destroyed it with that last performance,” he says.
Elbow’s Guy Garvey joining Ripon folk singer-songwriter Billie Marten – regularly featured on his Guy Garvey’s Finest Hour show on BBC 6Music on Sunday afternoons – during her supporting set. Picture: Andy Hughes
Far from it, you can add Garvey’s singing to that list of the beautiful. He is very much the fulcrum, the focus, the master of ceremonies, especially as Elbow – as unglamorous as their name and body part – don’t really do Las Vegas “showbiz”. Well, aside from a five-piece choir, a trio of brass players and a gleaming, huge mirror ball, stage front, for Mirrorball (yes, yes, I know, what did the Romans ever do for us?).
The dark blue stage backdrop, reminiscent of a fossil and Leeds United’s third kit last season, does not change, like those abbey ruins to either side. That is not a problem in itself, although projections of the band’s performance would have been beneficial for those further away from the stage, just as they had such an impact in the Sheds’ shows in 2024.
The problem is more when some songs hover close to dirges: Great Expectations, Her To The Earth, The Birds, for example, while Balu, Puncture Repair and Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years are graceful but glide by.
The audience chatter rises notably on those occasions, before either Garvey’s humorous banter or a change of pace for the blood-stirring Good Blood Mexico City, from Audio Vertigo, makes its mark.
Robin Hood’s Bay folk luminary Eliza Carthy opening Thursday’s Live At York Museum Gardens bill with The Restitution. Picture: Andy Hughes
On an evening that had begun with sets by Eliza Carthy & The Restitution and Ripon singer-songwriter Billie Marten, by now the night was darkening and stage lights brightening as Elbow hit their stride with “the whistling song”, Lippy Kids. “Build a rocket, boys,” comes the audience refrain en masse. Mirrorball, Magnificent (She Says); they are on a roll now, and it’s all gonna be magnificent from here on in.
Even Sober, from their new Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP, elicits the most unlikely singalong, its perkiness at odds with the sobriety within. The crowd chanting rises for set-closer Grounds For Divorce, before being surpassed by the encore double delight of My Sad Captains (“Oh my soul”), Station Approach’s contender for Best Elbow Song Ever, and One Day Like This, the one more commonly crowned with that title.
It took its time, but from Lippy Kids onwards, “one night like this a year did see me right”.
Elbow’s set list, Live At York Museum Gardens, July 3 2025, 8.30pm to 10.30pm
1. Starlings (from The Seldom Seen Kid); 2. Lovers’ Leap (Audio Vertigo); 3. Adriana Again (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 4. Station Approach (Leaders Of The Free World); 5. Kindling (Little Fictions); 6. Puncture Repair (Leaders Of The Free World); 7. Great Expectations (Leaders Of The Free World); 8. Her To The Earth (Audio Vertigo); 9. Balu (Audio Vertigo); 10. Good Blood Mexico City (Audio Vertigo); 11. The Seldom Seen Kid (Flying Dream 1); 12. Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years (Audio Vertigo); 13. The Birds (Build A Rocket Boys!); 14. Lippy Kids (Build A Rocket Boys!); 15. Mirrorball (The Seldom Seen Kid); 16. Magnificent (She Says) (Little Fictions); 17. Sober (new, Audio Vertigo Echo elbow EP); 18. Grounds For Divorce (The Seldom Seen Kid). Encores: 19. My Sad Captains (The Take Off And Landing Of Everything); 20. One Day like This (The Seldom Seen Kid).
No songs from 2001’s Asleep In The Dark, 2003’s Cast Of Thousands or 2019 chart topper Giants Of All Sizes.
Night and Day: One Day Like This turns into ‘one night like this a year would see me right’ in the finale to Elbow’s concert at York Museum Gardens. Picture: Andy Hughes