I don’t suppose anyone in the UK caught the chance to see the broadcast of the special Elbow gig the band did with the BBC orchestra and a vocal choir performing The Seldom Seen Kid in full last night? By all rights I should have reported about it here but considering I found out about it 5 minutes before the first broadcast started (it looped all night), it was too late.

Nonetheless, it was a fantastic performance even if it had its occasional flaws – Garvey’s mic was mixed very low at times, and the performance of the album highlight (well, one out of all the 11 highlights on the album) “Weather to Fly” was a bit shambly as Carvey’s voice couldn’t reach the constant absurdly high falsettos on the album and the vocal choir was completely unused in the backing vocal heavy track. Still, it was absolutely brilliant all the other times. The songs that had string sections on the album sounded absolutely gorgeous and the ones that didn’t got extremely interesting and often perfectly fitting arrangements – “An Audience with the Pope” sounded even more of an official cinematic Bond-tune than it did before. In the process of it all they pretty much landed with the definitive version of “Grounds for Divorce” as well.

The band is currently taking pre-orders for a special, limited and exclusive package of the performance on their official website. The box contains a CD and DVD of the performance as well as postcard photos and so forth.

The gig will most likely make its way to Youtube in full at some point – every Elbow fan should definitely give it a check.

Grounds for Divorce (live with BBC Orchestra and choir)

Tags: Elbow

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 1st, 2009 at 3:42 pm and is filed under Live, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.