ELBOW - 'GENTLE STORM' NEW VIDEO DIRECTED BY KEVIN GODLEY

 

elbow make available today a further track from their forthcoming album, ‘Little Fictions’ together with a landmark video. The short for ‘Gentle Storm’ is directed by the legendary Kevin Godley and sees him revisit the iconic promo he directed in 1985 for Godley and Creme’s ‘Cry’, a video that remains one of the touchstone examples of the genre.

The idea to re-imagine the ‘Cry’ video came from lead singer Guy Garvey as he explains:

‘‘Gentle Storm’ reminded me of something but I couldn’t work it out for a bit, the yearning and the sparsity of the sound. When I worked out it was ‘Cry’ I asked the rest of the band if they remembered the video cos it was such a seismic event as a kid. Pete and Mark did but Craig didn’t and I realised that a lot of people wouldn’t know the track or the video even though they were BOTH so important to me. So Kevin Godley is a Prestwich boy and so am I so I thought ‘I’ll be a cheeky bastard and get in touch with him and see if he is up for doing it again for our track.’ It was amazing that he was up for it. We got a load of our friends and family involved so they ALSO are in it. The shoot day was incredible, video shoots can be quite grim but it was such a great atmosphere that Kevin created and the finished film is something we are amazingly proud to be involved with.’

Kevin’s initial reaction to that call from Guy was puzzlement, but as he explains, he soon saw what could be possible for all concerned.

‘When Guy Garvey called me and said: “Would you consider recreating the ‘Cry’ video for our new song ‘Gentle Storm’ I was a bit puzzled. Why would he want something that was already out there? Then I realised… ‘out there’ really meant out there since 1985 and a whole generation or three wouldn’t have seen the original, or have a clue who Godley & Creme were, so to a world of millennials it would probably be “who the fuck?”

I didn’t really have to direct anyone - they all became suitably themselves as soon as the camera rolled. Everything felt real, nothing felt forced and there were no fuck ups, no tantrums and no 35 mm gates to check as we shot on 4K res digital video. In fact the only difference between this shoot and Cry was the major technological advance of steadying people’s heads with a sink plunger instead of a saucepan.’

‘Little Fictions’ has been hailed as one of elbow’s finest albums to date, described as ‘silky and punchy and full of sonic detail’ by Mojo magazine in a four star review and regarded by Q as simply ‘another brilliant album’ adding a further four stars. 

To see the video for ‘Gentle Storm’ go to  http://vevo.ly/QdJ3Vm. 

‘Gentle Storm’ and previously released tracks from the album can be heard at https://open.spotify.com/artist/0TJB3EE2efClsYIDQ8V2Jk. 

‘Little Fictions’ is released by Polydor on 3^rd February 2017 on Gatefold Vinyl, CD and digital download. Those pre-ordering the album digitally will receive ‘Gentle Storm’, ‘Magnificent (She Says)’ and ‘All Disco’ immediately. A special edition boxset of the album containing a bespoke book, CD LP and digital download of the album is also available in limited quantities exclusively on the elbow store.

FOR MORE INFORMATION          -              LOUDHAILER PRESS

Lewis Jamieson                                            lewis@loudhailerpress.com / 07718 652582 / @LewJam

www.elbow.co.uk

THE ARTICLE

The Article

The article stood on the hill outside the capital city of each member land. It was visited every year on the date of its creation by the great and the good, stood in serried ranks to salute the symbol of peace and prosperity. It had been there for fifty years, a testament to the modernity of the people of the lands and their superiority to those who had gone before with their wars and their destruction, their prejudices and their lack of fellow feeling.

At first the article had been universally popular. Those outside the lands had looked on with envy at those who lived under the article’s benign gaze, an invisible power to protect and nourish the people. Those allied to the lands, with their own articles and shared experience of the horrors of conflict had applauded the lands for their commitment to a better way of life. In the lands of the diktat, the naysayers who were imprisoned and disappeared had pointed to the article as a beacon of hope, as something to aspire to and fight for. The lands of the article had consistently supported these refuseniks. When the lands of the diktat collapsed under the falsity of their theory, the lands of the article had welcomed them with open arms, leaving only a bruised and distressed rump outside their new and improved community. It seemed that the lands of the article were destined to be the saviours of humanity. 

All were in favour of the article. Those who weren’t simply didn’t understand the power of the article. So great was the support for the article that those who insisted on publicly denying its power within the lands were called ‘shovers’ and laughed at for their crazy theories. Some compared them to the ‘smashers’ who had caused chaos in the time before the article. The article provided jobs and new technologies that made life better for all. No one was left behind. Those who seemed to be left behind were not there because of the article but because they were ‘idlers’. The ‘idlers’ were obviously that because people from the new lands of the article and those who escaped from lands beyond it (for there were still many places where the article was resisted) came to the lands and found work and contributed to the good of all. The ‘idlers’ only had themselves to blame. The ‘shovers’ hated the ‘idlers’ but they recognised that the ‘idlers’ hated those they called ‘pushers’; the believers in the article, the establishment, the experts and the people in control.  So the ‘shovers’ stared to whisper in the ears of the ‘idlers’, promising them great things if they helped overturn the article. 

As time past, the wars that created the article became a thing of first memory and then history. The towns and cities were rebuilt, the children and grandchildren of the people of the lands travelled throughout and learnt the language and customs of their fellow citizens and forgot the disagreements and distrust that, only decades before, could have seen them shooting each other rather than sharing conversation. Some began to wonder if the article was really all powerful. There seemed to be more and more ‘idlers’ wherever you looked. Some of the ‘pushers’ suggested that the article needed to be considered anew, that the ‘idlers’ were not to blame, that the article itself was creating them. But the majority of the ‘pushers’ were doing ok, they had their new things and their settled lives, they had forgotten what could happen, what had happened in the past and they ignored the pleas for the ‘idlers’, electing to pursue them further. They forced the ‘idlers’ to work for their bread and took their houses from them if they didn’t work. The ‘shovers’ saw this and they smiled. With each push the ‘idlers’ came closer to them and there were more and more ‘idlers’.

 So it came to past that as time went on the voices of the ‘idlers’ and the ‘shovers’ combined became so loud that the ‘pushers’ decided to shut them up for once and for all. In the lands of the article one by one the ‘pushers’ in charge decided to ask the people to say that the article was good for all. On that day in each of the lands the people spoke. And some of them said that the article was not good. Enough of them said that the article was not good for the article to be removed. The ‘pushers’ were aghast. How could the article not be good? It had kept them safe for five decades, made life better for all. The ‘pushers’ repeated that the ‘shovers’ were crazy. The ‘shovers’ said that they were now in charge. Some ‘pushers’ pretended to be ‘shovers’. The ‘idlers’ were the happiest. They had told the ‘pushers’ where to go and now their protectors, ‘the shovers’ would make it all ok.

Years of strife followed. The ‘shovers’ shoved and the ‘pushers’ pushed. The people of the diktat lands saw their chance and made their empire anew, the lands of the former article too busy fighting each other to stop them. The ‘ilders’ soon realised that the ‘shovers’ didn’t really care about them. Soon they became ‘smashers’ and the lands of the article were again ravaged by strife and war and misery.

After decades of ‘smashers’ smashing and ‘pushers’ pushing and  ‘shovers’ shoving whilst all around the people of the diktat lands gorged themselves on the weak and the defenceless a peace was declared. And on a hill outside each of the capital cities of the former article lands was erected the declaration. And the declaration promised peace and prosperity and all were happy to be people of the declaration. Except for those who weren’t but they were just crazy.

Powerless to the People

We were in one of those awful playbarn things over the weekend. You know the types, former warehouses that have been kitted out with caged play areas and soft landing sites surrounded by cafes and chairs for the adults to sit and try and block out the incessant noise of hundreds of kids going mad. I looked around at the parents and wondered why on earth we did this stuff. Here's what I came up with.

1. Making play pay
We have been told that our world is dangerous even though all studies tell us we live in the best time ever for homosapiens. We see paedophiles around very corner, stoked by the media frenzy at every case. We are conditioned to be risk averse. The paradox of our increased safety leading to a desire for more safety is well documented. So we don't allow our kids to play in natural environments free of parental oversight. My childhood of leaving home on my bike in the morning with my mates and returning for tea is long gone. Even the after school back alley kickarounds feel like something kids did in history books. Play must be supervised and safety certified. Which costs.

2. Always on adulthood
Plenty of my fellow parents were on their mobiles and laptops. This was a Saturday. Now, they may have been looking at Facebook or doing their Ocado order or whatever but my guess is at least some of them were working. Because so many of us now are, constantly, totally on all hours. Again, studies have shown that this is a stupid idea, the longer the hours, the less productive the work but we have all bought into (or been forced into) this idea that being 'busy' is a good thing. Those of us that can be 'busy' anyhow. The reflection of this is the layabouts of George Osborne's closed curtains in the daytime, a handy bogey man or woman that all us 'busy' people can tut about as we stand by and watch their welfare disappear and have them forced to work for Mike Ashley for a pittance. We are too busy to look after the kids or supervise the play so we outsource it. And then work extra hours to pay for it. Which is a bit mad when you think about it.

3. On Demand children
So you take your kids to the playbarn because its good for them to run around isn't it? It may be in an air conditioned hellhole but at least they're moving aren't they. And you can get some work done while they chuck themselves down slides. So all good yeah? But then they get hungry or see that they could be fed something. Everywhere kids were tucking into £7 pizza and chips. Sugary drinks galore. Because if you are halfway through that Powerpoint for Monday or trying to deal with all the admin that being alive in 2016 requires (changing electricity providers is my personal bugbear) you don't have the time or the patience to negotiate a better food option. Easier to cave in isn't it? After all, we're now in a generation who can access any information at a moment's notice, pick from a menu of televisual treats, pause the program while they pop to the fridge or the cupboard for something to snack on - you're not sure what because you're buried in a work thing that is 'urgent' on Sunday morning or that latest missive telling you to change this or switch that before the interest rate / standing charge / monthly sub jumps as your 'exclusive offer period' is at an end.

4. The Endless Guilt of Parenting
So whilst you are buried under all the 'life' stuff and the 'work' stuff our friends in advertising are bombarding you with images of how it should really be. 50 Things Children Should Do, 100 Places Your Kid Should See, read with your kid every night and so on ad infinitum, a slew of messaging that is designed to make you feel crap if you don't tick every box in the good parent menu; a menu designed by coporations and their marketing henchmen to part you from your money as fast as possible because, as car firms know, nothing works better than getting the kid to ask for something.

5. The easy way out
Perhaps it was the Iraq War, or the coalition, or just your life experience that things never got better but plenty of sensible, thinking people have clearly come to the conclusion that politics is a waste of time. All the above and more exhaust us, just keeping our heads above water, irrespective of whether we are living in a mortgage house or scraping rent together, don't have the time and the energy to really think through things anymore. Far easier to pick up our opinions second hand and borrow them, whether from Katie Hopkins or Owen Jones. Far easier to say that voting is a waste of time, far simpler to not think about why it isn't working, to seperate the good MPs from the bad. Just lump them all in together and spend that hour watching zombies on Netflix or killing them on the PS4.

Given that this seems to be the year of 'what the fuck' you have to hope that we might look at this and think a bit about what needs to change. That we might remember the mess we are in was caused by the international finance institutions that have spent our bailout money and delivered precisely fuck all for us, that this was all set in train by the very corporations and banks that now overlord us destroying the manufacturing base of the UK and USA for profit in the 80s under Thatcher and Reagan. (It's all there to read up on, if you can't be arsed to read it, watch Michael Moore's 'Capitalism, it's on Netflix and it's very funny / sad). That we are all in the same boat pretty much, some people's boats are bigger, some own their boats (or rent them from a bank rather than a landlord), that we and our kids are being herded into a segregated, marketed and compromised world where peril will stalk our every move and uncertainty will mean we spend less and less time caring about each other and more and more time just surviving. And we might say ENOUGH and do something about it. Stop believing the ads, stop buying the stuff you don't need, stop relying on 60 second news to tell you what is going on, stop thinking that other people are out to get what you should have and think about what you should have and how you might share more and grab less. And if that sounds like pie in the sky hippy nonsense then that only says to me we've come a long way down a particularly dark and dismal road. Time to turn around.

Generation Terrorists?

This blog follows on from a Facebook discussion which you can read here

Cliche it may be but when applied to the music industry it is fair to say that life used to be so much simpler. A world where subcultures were easily identifiable was a world in which marketing music to those subcultures could be based on a reasonable amount of certainty. Trying to sell the new Primitives single? Well, you can assume that a fair proportion of The Smiths fanbase will be interested, that NME and Melody Maker will be interested, that Peel and Kid Jensen will be interested. Given that the market is to an extent ring fenced you can gather your (no doubt meagre pre RCA deal) finances and aim in one direction.Your target market wears a fair amount of black, cardigans, brogues and is totally plugged in to all the above. Your live play will be University bars and the pub circuit built up through punk and early post punk. You are working with certainties. The results will vary of course, music has never been a given, but within parameters that you can aniticpate to some degree. You make a cheap video and can expect it to air once a month minimum on The Chart Show.

Contrast that with now. Irrespective of the genre you are working within, if indeed your artist actually could be said to fit into a genre, there are no obvious subcultures of any size that you can depend on with certainty. There is no given media that can access your anticipated fanbase. There are no norms.

In conversation with a good friend who runs a highly respected UK metal label I aired this opinion whilst suggesting to him that his world was the last bastion of the dependable market. He swiftly disabused me of this notion. Even metal, that hermetically sealed world, was now subject to the vagaries of modernity. He pointed to the fact that half the population under 30 now sport tattoos and nose rings, that the 'metal' scene is now confused by an influx of new bands that look metal but sound pop, and that, oppositely, bands that don't look metal have co-opted some of its sound and production into their music. Even in this world there was no conveniently definable subculture left to depend upon.

In one sense this is free market theory brought to bear in an environment that previously depended on an element of self induced protectionism. From punk through to Britpop, non pop  bands were to some extent immune to the cut throat dynamics of the music industry. The truism that so many previously moderately successful indie acts (I'm looking at you in particular The Mightly Lemon Drops) failed when placed outside of the comfort blanket world of the indie scene seems only to demonstrate further that the ring fenced subculture of the 80s and 90s was a halcyon time when alternative music colluded with alternative media to create a hermetically sealed bubble in which artists and small labels could sustain a business model that would, just about, keep everyone from starvation. Looking back through my vinyl there are numerous examples of purchases made on the basis of cultural solidarity as much as aural excitement, donations to the idea of music rather than the actual tune contained within.

The death of this is, to some extent, linked to my previous post; a cutural pinpoint that stands for a wider political and societal disease. For that delineated music world was based on the idea of communities, of finding fellow feeling and idenitification within a group, a non reality that has now been distilled into an expression of pure individualism.

From a business point of view this offers an incredibly complex new world to navigate for artists, managers, labels and media. We can no longer depend on anything beyond results and it is no great surprise that the previous collective collusion that saw all defined by their genre has been replaced by demographics and market testing, a new search for a certainty in a very uncertain market. Interestingly, this removal of the basis of cultural marketing has created the very generational dislocation that so many commentators have been demanding since the last great musical / cultural shift of acid house at the close of the 80s. New artists, managers and industry members think less in terms of marketable groups and far more in terms of individual track exploitation. Applied to bands like the 1975, who prompted the discussion that led to this blog, that offers a much wider target market, albeit one that is far shallower and less dependable than those which preceeded it. As a side issue, it has removed the other previously precious pillar of music marketing, the novelty of the 'new' and replaced it with a wholly different, complex and challenging environment in which all those concerned with helping artists to succeed need to rip up what we know and start again. The newness of an artist, even whether they are still in existence, is irrelevant, music is now a strand of entertainment in business terms, the song is another marketable commodity to be exploited across all income streams.

For new artists, primary to this new approach is not how many social media followers we have or where we can secure our video premiere or which (if any) playlist we can get our song one but rather the primacy of the tune. We are now not just in competition with all the other new tunes but all the tunes that have gone before. Witness a day on 6 Music, the obvious radio outlet for an 'alternative' band and see how a new artist has to compete with classics on a minute by minute basis for exposure. Those old desires to frame a coherent PR campaign around media coverage have been blown apart by the change in the opposite side of the dynamic; the public. The public still want to hear music but not join a gang. A generation raised on streaming make no distinction between old and new and have no affinity towards a given subculture nor, conversely, a desire to reject music on the same basis. There are no golden bullets, our approach now has to be predicated on an ultra joined up attack on all fronts and, more crucially, an acceptance from all concerned that in all likelihood this is not a way to make a living, if not forever then for a fair amount of time.

This shift is already well underway at the major labels; a shift from prioritising the new to a mixed market economy in which catalogue, reissues, streaming, synch, live income and merch all coalesce to transform the business of making and exploiting new music into someting wholly different, a curation of music and its assocaited by products over time. Getting your track on a Spotify playlist is now worth a hell of a lot more financially than getting it onto the B List at 6 Music. The steady drip has replaced the sudden deluge. A similar process is in play at the independents, see Cooking Vinyl's mixed market of heritage artists and small label affiliation, a balanced business model that allows the possibilty of new success without betting the house on the outcome and is only one of many initiatives across the independent sector under the umbrella terms 'label services'.

Ultimately this means a continued shrinkage for the idea of the traditional music industry and its replacement by a semi-professional second tier where once those ring fenced indie labels stood. The generational shift for which us old timers hoped for has happened without us noticing because it was outside our experience and, therefore, our understanding. Where we desired a homogenous, easily categorisable musical movement we find a fragmented, non linear musical generation; predicated on its rejection of genre and, whether through choice or circumstance, focused on the temporary nature of is existence; a pick and mix, build your own image solution for a highly individualistic and precarious age.