A lot has changed for Guy Garvey and Elbow since I spoke to him in April of last year, ahead of their gig at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue. Their album The Seldom Seen Kid has been an unqualified success, selling in large quantities and raising the band’s profile to a new level. Awards soon followed: the group won the UK’s prestigious 2008 Mercury Music Prize, Best British Group at the 2009 Brit Awards and picked up a few Ivor Novello Awards along the way. Oh, and let’s not forget the opening slots for Coldplay and U2. The show at Sixth and I was one of the best I saw in 2008, so expectations (and ticket counts) were higher for last night’s show at the 9:30 Club. I ran into a friend on the street on the way to the club and told him I hoped this show would be grittier and rock harder, since the band were playing a proper rock club this time around, but sadly this was not to be.

Taking the stage promptly at 9:30 to an enthusiastic, bordering on rapturous crowd, Elbow played “Starlings,” Kid‘s opening track and their standard set opener, and followed with the mid-tempo “The Bones of You” before slowing things down with “Mirrorball.” Thus the tone of the night was set, with the band weighing their set down with their slower, more ethereal tunes, like “The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver,” “The Stops,” and “Switching Off,” and only occasionally giving the audience some release with more uptempo work like “Grounds For Divorce” and “Newborn.”