creating a stadium-full of community

We went to see Elbow on Wednesday evening. Unexpectedly, we were offered really good tickets to see them at the O2. I have been listening to their latest album since it came out and trying to decide whether it's wonderful or just more of the same high class slightly melancholy songs.

Seeing them perform most of it live made me realise that it's possibly their best work to date - better than Seldom seen kid and rivalling Leaders of the Free world.

Elbow consists of four superb musicians with a frontman who is able to create a community in a stadium full of people. He works the crowd like all good singers do but the songs have already suggested that here is someone who gets the fact that we hurt and that we need others to share our hurt with.

So on Real Life (Angel), he sings to a friend in pain

you with the eyes of the met not forgotten
you with the eyes for the lonely whoever
you with the laugh that could bring down a tenement
talking your way to the heart of the citadel
up on the tables, or shoulders of strangers, or
under my arms we add to the waterfall
my little sister with brothers in common
you'll never need fear a thing in this world

while i have a breath in me; blood in my veins
you'll never need fear thing in this world

while i have a breath in me; blood in my veins
you never need fear a thing in this blue world

It speaks volumes to me about being community, being church. I think it's why Garvey is able to turn a stadium gig into an intimate encounter of a few mates around the piano.

Elsewhere in the song he tells her

go straight to the place where you first lost your balance
and find your feet with the people that you love

before assuring her that she'll pull through this time, stronger and wiser:

and on that hallelujah morning
in the arms of new love, the peace that you feel's real life 

Of course, as a Christian pastor, I can't help take those lines and put them into the mouth of the angel who greets us at the empty tomb of Jesus (as I'll be doing in the morning). I know Garvey has no thought of that in this lyric. Indeed, this album ends with the intensely moving The Blanket of Night where, in a song that seems to be slightly influenced by In the Night Garden on Cbeebies, he fears that he and his daughter might sink under the weight of life's events and especially the parting of ways between her mum and him:

paper cup of a boat
heaving chest of the sea
carry both of us
carry her, carry me

from the place we were born
to the land of the free
carry both of us
carry her, carry me

the ocean that bears us from our home
could sail us or take us for its own
the danger that life should lead us here
my angel could i have steered us clear?

gone, the light from her eyes
with the lives that we made
just the two of us
in the night on the waves

moving silent her lips
by the moon's only light
sowing silver prayers
in the blanket of night

the ocean that bears us from our home
could sail us or take us for its own
the danger that life should lead us here
my angel could i have steered us clear?

paper cup of the boat
heaving chest of the sea
carry both of us
or, swallow her, swallow me