Review: Elbow close Heritage Live 2024 open-air concert series at Audley End
Towards the end of Elbow’s set at Audley End, singer Guy Garvey had a message for those who sow hate and division and those who seek power by those means.
Without referencing the arsonists, looters and thugs who, in the aftermath of the Southport tragedy, have been attacking police, mosques and asylum seeker accommodation (and Greggs, of course, to really underline their concerns as citizens), the big bear from Bury told the sea of faces looking back at him: “This is what we like to do.”
And what Elbow do, with no need to resort to arms such as bricks, bins and branches, is unite thousands of people into a happy mob through the power of music. You have to hand it to them.
Following in the headlining footsteps of Suede, Madness and Richard Ashcroft on the preceding Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights respectively, Garvey and co brought the 2024 Heritage Live open-air concert series at Audley End to a close on Sunday.
Two years after they previously headlined at the stately home just outside Saffron Walden, this was the final UK gig on their Audio Vertigo tour – and how blessed we were to witness it.
The audience – addressed collectively throughout by Guy as “Saffron, my love” or just “Saffie”, although a young lad named Bradley got his own namecheck – was treated to a 105-minute set of 19 tracks that spanned the band’s last 19-year album output, from 2005’s Leaders of the Free World (in the form of bookend tracks Station Approach and Puncture Repair) to this year’s Audio Vertigo.
From the current album, we were treated to Elbow’s last four singles – Lovers’ Leap, Balu, Good Blood Mexico City and Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years – plus The Picture.
My highlights? The older stuff, most notably The Bones of You, the beautiful Kindling (Fickle Flame) and My Sad Captains, for which Garvey was the conductor for the crowd’s vocals.
For Mirrorball, two large grounded glitterballs at the front corners of the stage were unveiled. A nice touch, but it wasn’t the same as 2022, when the moon itself appeared behind the Audley End audience on the brow of the hill.
Finally, the happy marriage of band and crowd was brought to a close with Grounds for Divorce. Garvey pulled our legs as he told us before that final number that there was nothing we could possibly do to get them to play any more tracks – now that would have been cause for protests.
As it was, Elbow emerged for an encore consisting of Lippy Kids and, appropriately given sporting events in Paris, the Olympian One Day Like This, which evoked memories of their performance at the London 2012 opening ceremony. If Audley End headlining was a Games event, Elbow would be multiple gold medallists.
The sound on Sunday was superb. The five-a-side team of Garvey, the Potter brothers Mark and Craig on guitar and keys respectively, 50th birthday boy Pete Turner on bass and Alex Reeves on drums was boosted to a full 11-piece by three-strong brass and string sections, which added an orchestral element to events.
Black and white was the theme of the eye-catching set design and lighting – all the colour, as ever, was supplied by Garvey’s art rock lyricism.
Given the disturbing events in cities and towns around the UK over the past week since those three innocent little girls were killed in Southport, a summer Sunday night in a soul bubble in the Essex countryside was just what was required.
Oh my soul – what a perfect waste of time.
Support was provided by Dana Gavanski and by The Waeve, featuring Blur’s Graham Coxon and Rose Elinor Dougall
