Elbow - Asleep In The Back - 4th Feb

James Berry takes a detailed look at the title track from an album that never was. I think that's correct anyway. Manchester's Elbow talk to Crud about the new single.
28/01/2002

Elbow greet the new year and pay an enamoured farewell to their emotionally-accomplished Mercury nominated album 'Asleep In The Back', and the ascending success that 2001 afforded them in bags, with a new double A side 'Asleep In The Back / Coming Second' on February 4th.

To avoid confusion we should point out now that 'Asleep In The Back' the song is not featured anywhere on 'Asleep In The Back' the album (…yet). Owning 'Asleep In The Back' the album is no reason whatsoever for not buying 'Asleep In The Back' the single. Reasonably clear now? Good.

It's backed up over the CDs with brand new songs of the now expected Elbow b-side quality, 'Puckfair' and 'Stumble', and a Misery Lab remix of 'Coming Second'. And their first DVD release features the full video of their sterling performance of 'Coming Second' from their London Astoria show last October, a photo gallery and bizarre arbitrary 30 second clips of the band on the beach in Brighton / on the bus / on a roller-coaster.

On top of the Mercury nomination last year, Manchester's Elbow are already up for awards this from Time Out magazine London and the usually trite and transparent Brits. If Belle and Sebastian can engineer the best new band Brit Award their way, why can't Elbow? Huh? And before they think about the next record and leap over to America to try their luck they play their biggest headline to date at the long sold out Shepherd's Bush Empire on January 29th.

We spoke to singer Guy Garvey before he jetted off to Cannes to play a British showcase a million miles away from their dismal Bury beginnings and got him to run us through the single track by track…

Asleep In The Back
"There's a lyric that often pops into my head, which is "words of love that almost sound like threats". It comes from something I never finished years ago and it popped into my head often enough for me to wonder what the fuck I was talking about. It's almost like threatening someone to love you, daring them to love you, y'know. The chorus is meant to sound a bit sinister - "oh you had to ask didn't you". I think everyone tests their lover sometimes. I mean, look how horrible I am. It's normally about the time you fall for somebody and you think 'oh she'd leave me if she knew all these things. So let's put it to the test, shall we'. Then you spend an evening being an absolute twat."

Coming Second
"Coming Second is about doing just that in a love triangle. It's about very bitterly disliking you ex-lover's new lover. It's meant to be a bit humourous, like a kid strike, a kid throwing his toys out the pram. By the time I wrote 'Coming Second' we were a bit happier than we had been doing the rest of the album."

Stumble
"That's a really simple thing we recorded in a dressing room in Germany, so it's got a really loose vibe. Craig really didn't like the shaker on it, he was like 'oh I played it out of time,' and I was like 'no you didn't, it's a big room'. So the shaker's out of time all the way through, but I don't think it matters. Lyrically it's a couple of things. It's basically about a prostitute who worked in this brothel above the guitar shop in Bury I worked at. I watched the customers going up and down the stairs every day and we shared a kitchen with them, so I'd go up to make the brews and got to know the girls quite well. There's a line in this Fay Dunnaway film, don't know which one, where she says "every whore knows failure", which I thought was really interesting . All these girls lived crazy double lives. The chorus is "they used to call you stumble, they used to call you baby giraffe," that's from an ex-girlfriend, who isn't a prostitute! She's incredibly tall and clumsy, but in a really cute way."

Puckfair
"Puckfair is the name of a pub in New York and the songs named after it because we had a particularly splendid evening in there, and it was written shortly after then. It's a natty little tune, I really love it. It was written on Cubase (PC sequencing software) round at Craig's house. When it went away to be mastered I sent a little note to Bunt who masters all our stuff saying 'some more of that distorted bass you love so much!'. I like bass to sound like it's rattling your teeth. But of course if your job's to make stuff sound clean and polished, like Bunt's is… I can remember saying 'can you fuck the bass up a bit so it knackers your speakers", and he's going 'are you trying to get me struck off!?". So it's another teeth rattler."

Crud Magazine© 2002

04/02 1 Giant Leap - My Culture 04/02 Elfpower Interview - Andrew Rieger - Creatures 04/02 Frou Frou Interview - Guy Sigsworth/Imogen Heap 04/02 Gomez Interview - Ian Ball 04/02 Idlewild - Live - London Astoria 04/02 K's Choice Interview 04/02 Leaves - Live - Camden Dingwall 04/02 Longwave Interview - Exit 04/02 Lucy Mongrel Interview 04/02 Oasis - The Hindu Times 04/02 Phantom Planet - Interview 04/02 Unwritten Law - Interview 04/02 VUE - Coordinates Interview 05/02 BRMC - LIve - Kentish Town, London 05/02 Breeders - Title K 05/02 FC Kahuna - Machine Says Yes 05/02 Moco - Live - London Monarch 05/02 Need New Body - Interview 05/02 The Soundtrack of Our Lives - Live - Soundhause, Northampton 05/02 The Bellrays - Meet The Bellrays 06/02 Fleadh Festival - Finsbury Park 06/02 Frou Frou Coordinates Interview 06/02 Incubus - Interview - Mark Einziger 06/02 North Mississippi Allstars - Interview 06/02 Papa Roach - She Loves Me Not 06/02 Proud Mary - Live - Northampton, Soundhaus 06/02 Pulp - Live - Sherwood Pines, Edwinstowe 06/02 Reindeer section - You Are My Joy 06/02 Silverchair - Diorama 06/02 Something Corporate - Leaving Through The Window 06/02 Soinc Youth - Interview 06/02 The Burn - The Smiling Face 06/02 The Coral - Live - Roadmender, Northampton 06/02 The LIbertines - Live - The Social, Nottingham 06/02 The Vines, Sheffield Leadmill 06/02 Trik Turner - Interview 06/02 Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Live, Soundhaus, Northampton 07/02 12 Stones Interview 07/02 Arolo -Interview 07/02 Buy To Let Doncaster - Anti Social Behaviour 07/02 Cassius - Interview 07/02 Farrah - Interview 07/02 Glassjaw - Interview 07/02 Neil Michael Haggerty - Interview 07/02 Hoobastank - Running Away 07/02 Leaves - Interview 07/02 LL Cool Jay Interview 07/02 Oasis - Live - Finsbury Park, London 07/02 Polyphonic Spree - Live - Camden Monarch 07/02 Queens of the Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf 07/02 Super Furry Animals - Interview 07/02 The Beatings - Live - Metro Club London 07/02 The Bellrays + The D4 - Virgin Megastore, Oxford Street London January 2001 July - August 2001 September - October 2001 November - December 2001 January - March 2002 April - July 2002 August - December 2002