Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
The mercurial band may be missing from his latest release but that’s not to say that the music on offer, the delicious Northern attitude and fiery wit is any the less impaired or any less fruitful because of it.
For Guy Garvey the chance to spread his dominion beyond that of Elbow for a while with a solo album, Courting The Squall, to allow the taste of a different beat to enthuse his soul must have been one that was too tantalising a prospect, a call to the song-writer within. To see if working with a different heartbeat could allow the already flourishing tide of concise observation of human activity to be expanded, be taken beyond the already seemingly limitless and be offered up as a trophy, a working man’s award in the same way that Lowry presented scope and Alan Bennett made thought obtainable.
It is hard to fail when you have the abundance of creativity at hand, when the words just seem to fall into place and the orchestra, the group onto which the music falls, is playing with extraordinary ease in the face of the one-time only accessible vacancy. It is hard to fail when the word-smith, the labourer and lover of words can evoke such memories for the fan of the Progressive movement in the shape of the High Priest Peter Gabriel and the thoroughly modern muse, the music is not vacant or empty of charm, it is an engaged force of will which dominates all.
It is the rage against the Tempest, the oncoming musical storm to which Guy Garvey responds, however there is no Caliban slaughtering the island, just the quiet repose of a man to whom tenderness is a by-word and to whom more gets done with a smile than a furious encounter. With that in mind Courting The Squall is a terrific endeavour against the fumes, the toxicity of modern appealing nature and in tracks such as Juggernaut, the excellence of Yesterday and the absolute tempting influence of Belly of the Whale, Guy Garvey attracts, not only fans of Elbow to the solo cause, but also woos those that may have found the encouragements of the band to be too lofty an ideal.
Whilst it would be unnatural to think of Elbow, at least not yet, folding over and quietly lingering in the background of musical heroes, to allow Guy Garvey this chance to offer something slightly different but still within the remit of casual excellence, shows that the song-writer is not just a trick invented by Lowry, that there is more dimension to him than the totality first thought; a tremendous piece of work, something to grab hold of in the eye of the storm.
Ian D. Hall