NEW SOPPY OUTLOOK TAKES OVER FOR ELBOW FRONTMAN

IF you’ve got tickets for Elbow’s upcoming tour, don’t worry – they have been busy rehearsing. It’s not frontman Guy Garvey’s favourite part of being in a band, but he knows it’s necessary, and by the time their tour starts at the end of February, they’ll have practised for a month, which he says is just right.

Rehearsals have, however, looked a bit different this time around. It’s the first time the band have prepared to go out on the road without drummer Richard Jupp, who, after 25 years, decided to leave a year ago.

“He just didn’t want to be in the band any more,” says Lancashireborn Garvey, 42. It’s clear the subject’s still a little raw, but he soldiers on.

“It was a little bit of a shock, but not an entire surprise. Nevertheless, it wasn’t expected. You can hardly call him a fair-weather drummer, 25 years in. I won’t pretend we’re still pals but nobody wishes him any ill. It’s just one of those things.”

Jupp’s departure helped set the mood for Elbow’s forthcoming album, Little Fictions. It’s their seventh; the first made without their drummer but, ironically, also their most beat-heavy album – possibly down down to overcompensating for Jupp’s departure, notes Garvey.

In early 2016, he and fellow remaining bandmates – Craig Potter, Mark Potter and Pete Turner – went up to Scotland, where they “played at being lords of the manor” at Gargunnock House, a Landmark Trust property in Stirlingshire.

Shell-shocked by the changes in the band, they were also there when news of David Bowie’s death broke, turning the already sombre mood even more melancholy.

They emerged with a couple of songs, Head For Supplies and the album’s closer, Kindling, and while they’re both downbeat, they’re far from typical. In spite of everything, Little Fictions is a hugely hopeful, upbeat record. The time-frame in which it was written is crucial, a time during which Garvey was married and visited India for the first time, but also grew fearful before and after the vote to leave the European Union.

“The album takes in lots of different things about what worries me in the current age. That in itself got me thinking about worrying in general; now Elbow are 40-plus, is worrying just a natural thing?

“Did our parents worry when they got to an age, or is this new?

“Have things gone to hell in a