Happy 15th Anniversary to Elbow’s third studio album Leaders of the Free World, originally released in the UK September 12, 2005.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” she yelled in my ear, as I leaned in toward her, trying my damndest to discern her words amidst the powerful, insistent sound of “Forget Myself” enveloping us at that moment, Guy Garvey bellowing, “Are you falling in love / Are you falling in love / Are you falling in love every second song?”
“This” was Elbow’s November 3, 2005 gig at Manhattan’s Hiro Ballroom, the first show that she and I ever saw together. “She” is Kelly, the small-town-girl-turned-recent-New-York-City-transplant I had serendipitously met—and incredulously fallen for, and hard, upon our chance first encounter—just twelve days prior. It seems as cliché as it gets, but believe me when I tell you that it was love at first sight for me. Okay, it was actually love at first sight and first conversation. But you get the point.
And “she” has been my wife for the past eleven years.
So yes, this is a story about falling in love. Twice.
Falling in love with my life partner, my soulmate, if you believe in such things (I was cautiously skeptical of the concept when I was younger, but not anymore, all thanks to Kelly).
And falling in love with a band. A band that I had been casually listening to for a few years by then, but hadn’t fully embraced until their third studio affair, Leaders of the Free World, arrived in the late summer of 2005.
The third time was indeed the charm for me, and though Kelly was discovering Elbow for the very first time that crisp autumn evening in the world’s greatest city, she fell for them too, right then and there. And in the fifteen years since we first saw them on stage together, they have remained our mutual favorite source of musical revelation.
Rewind about six weeks prior to that Hiro Ballroom performance and I was visiting London for a few days, before embarking upon a family trip—to celebrate my mother’s 60th birthday—in Florence, Italy. Record shopping is an imperative for me whenever I travel, and London might just be my favorite city to indulge my obsession. Considering my tendency to blow my cash with minimal restraint when it comes to buying music, on this trip in question, I decided to apply some budget parameters, capping my purchases to no more than ten albums.
Released just a week or so before my arrival, Leaders of the Free World was one of the ten—ok, scratch that, the twenty or so—that made its way into my shopping bags. And more than any of the other CDs I snagged during my visit, I ended up listening to it incessantly for the duration of my trip, convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that the aforementioned Garvey, Richard Jupp (drums), Pete Turner (bass), and brothers Craig (keys) and Mark (guitar) Potter had crafted their first bona fide masterpiece, following the close-calls of their debut Asleep in the Back (2001) and its successor Cast of Thousands (2003).
Leaders of the Free World still, to this day, immediately evokes vivid memories of that trip to the other of my two most beloved cities, and for this—among many other reasons—I’m forever indebted to its abundant charms.
Largely written during the group’s world tour in support of Cast of Thousands, the band maximized their time on the road together to bring their initial ideas for songs to fruition. In a 2005 FaceCulture interview, Garvey recalled how the seeds of Leaders of the Free World’s songs first germinated, by way of “A chord progression on an acoustic to just a drum beat, or a short poem, you know, that I‘d thrown down, or just a melody. Just odds and sods, really, just the beginning of things.”
Upon returning home to their sanctuary of Manchester, the quintet set about recording the more formalized songs for their third album at Blueprint Studios, notably without the production oversight of Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode, Doves) who had worked on both of the LP’s two precursors. Their first solely self-produced effort, Leaders of the Free World solidified Elbow’s penchant for seamlessly traversing different tempos and textures with grace and gravitas, while Garvey’s uncanny awareness of self and the world around him manifested more eloquently than ever before within his incisive, poetic lyrics.
A musical love letter to their Manchester stomping grounds, the album reflects a band relieved to be back home and redeemed by the solace to be found there within their familiar haunts. “The greatest thing about this past year was being at home, so you can sleep in your own bed, see your partners and friends,” Garvey confided to Magnet magazine.
Juxtaposed with this collective sense of relief, however, is the underlying sense of loss and intangible love that pervades a handful of the more melancholic—yet simultaneously, and refreshingly, sanguine— songs, owing, at least in some part, to the dissolution of Garvey and radio/TV broadcaster Edith Bowman’s relationship. “A lot of the songs on Leaders of the Free World are about our relationship,” Bowman explained during a 2012 Daily Mail interview. “When I hear those songs, it doesn’t feel strange at all. I guess I’m lucky in that Elbow are a brilliant feel-good band. Those songs that were written about me are so beautiful. It also helps that me and Guy have remained great friends.” Garvey echoed her sentiments to Magnet, admitting, “It was sad that it didn’t work, but I don’t regret it because I’ve made a lifelong friend out of it.”
Indeed, it is Leaders of the Free World’s handful of torch songs tinged with hope that I’ve always connected with most profoundly. None more so than the sublime “Great Expectations,” which stands as my personal favorite on the album, and apparently, Garvey himself boasts an even more intense affection for it. Atop subdued yet emotive piano and guitar flourishes, Garvey recalls the experience of falling in love, crooning, “Spitfire thin and strung like a violin, I was / Yours was the face with a grace from a different age / But you were the sun in my Sunday morning.” Arguably one of the finest ballads ever crafted, this is the song that comes most immediately to mind when I recall that November evening at the Hiro Ballroom with Kelly, as I relinquished whatever relationship hang-ups I harbored, embracing my vulnerabilities and surrendering to my own great expectations about our newfound connection and what the future might hold for us.
In a similar vein as the daydream-induced wedding scene that cleverly plays out on “Great Expectations,” “An Imagined Affair” finds Garvey conjuring idyllic but wholly fictionalized visions of romance, seizing upon the tricks that our minds can play on us when we long for someone or something strongly enough (or when we’ve had a drink or two too many down at our local pub).
A somber yet ultimately redemptive breakup song, “The Stops” features Garvey’s voice placed squarely at the forefront of the arrangement, as he confesses, “These are sober days and I know it can't be / But I'll miss you the way you miss the sea.” Four songs later, “The Everthere” unfolds as an inspired anthem for the longevity and durability of unconditional love, with Garvey earnestly inquiring of his partner, “If I lose a sequin here and there / More salt than pepper in my hair / Can I rely on you when all the songs are through / To be for me the everthere, everthere?”
A balanced album of various moods and melodies, as is Elbow’s modus operandi, the bulk of the songs sequenced in Leaders of the Free World’s first half dispense with the melancholia in exchange for bolder, more buoyant compositions punctuated by the band’s tempered swagger. “I haven't been myself of late / I haven't slept for several days / But coming home I feel like I / Designed these buildings I walk by,” Garvey reflects in the initial lines of the album-opening “Station Approach,” a slow burn of an ode to returning home to Manchester—and more specifically, the road leading to the city’s main railway hub Manchester Piccadilly—that reaches its peak power when Jupp’s drums kick in with a bang at the 2:49 mark.
This is followed by the percussive “Picky Bugger,” replete with not-so-thinly veiled cocaine references (“Keep your powder dry / In order and line”) that form what Garvey has referred to as “a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks they’re the bee’s knees because of the substances they’re taking.”
Not coincidentally, two of the supreme standouts surface in the form of the two official singles released from the album. The charging, aforementioned lead single “Forget Myself” distills the essence of a love-seeking night out in Manchester and contains one of the most rousing choruses you’ll ever hear, with Garvey professing, “No, I know I won't forget you / But I'll forget myself if the city will forgive me.” As the song progresses toward its conclusion, he offers an astute exploration of the self-consciousness and yearning that many night revelers feel, especially as the evening’s festivities linger on into the late hours, inquiring, “Do you move through the room with a glass in your hand / Thinking too hard about the way you stand / Are you watching them pair off and drinking 'em long? / Are you falling in love every second song?”).
Contrary to its suggestive title and despite the sadly abundant fodder that could have warranted such a thematic focus, Leaders of the Free World is not an overtly political record. But the title track—largely informed by George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election and his lineage (“Passing the gun from father to feckless son”)—represents the lone exception. It’s a searing indictment of our dubious leadership and a deconstruction of the superficial alias (“Leader of the Free World”) often assigned to U.S. presidents, with Garvey illuminating the juvenile and antagonistic disposition of those in charge, in lines like, “But the leaders of the free world / Are just little boys throwing stones / And it's easy to ignore / Till they're knocking on the door of your homes.”
In a BBC interview just prior to the album’s release, Garvey rightfully admonished that “everyone has to consider their opinion now; we’re in real trouble and our elected leaders are to blame.” Fifteen years later, and that “trouble” has been transformed into the deep, deep shit we find ourselves in now, our fingers pointing in the same direction with heightened conviction (and justification).
My reverence and passion for Elbow’s music are boundless and likely will forever remain as such. But more specifically, I’m eternally grateful to the band—and Leaders of the Free World in particular—for soundtracking those early, wistful days of my burgeoning romance with Kelly, a love affair that proved to be so much more life-altering—and life-affirming—than anything I had ever imagined or experienced up to that point in my life. So while Urban Hymns remains my all-time favorite album, Leaders of the Free World may very well be the album that holds the most personal and poignant meaning for me.
With the band’s brilliant Giants of All Sizes (2019) a fixture on our family turntable since its arrival last fall, Kelly and I had been looking forward to seeing these fine gentlemen on their routine New York City jaunt sometime this year. But obviously, that’s not in the cards.
Nevertheless, we can’t wait to see them—among all of our other beloved bands—once again, hopefully sooner than later, provided that the so-called leaders of the free world get their shit together and actually lead us out of this mess we’re in.
LISTEN: