The 50(ish) greatest albums of all time
The Seldom Seen Kid, and All of His Mates
Album #9 : Elbow — The Seldom Seen Kid
OK, let’s be honest. This probably isn’t one of the top 50 albums of all time. However, it did win the Mercy Music Prize in 2008 and it is one of my favourite albums ever, so indulge me.
In 2009, following in the wake of the success of The Seldom Seen Kid, Elbow played a series of gigs with the Hallé Orchestra at Manchester’s Bridgewater Hall. They live streamed the gig in the Castlefield Bowl, an outdoor amphitheatre, and me and some friends went along. I sat on stony steps all day and drank warm Fosters. I waved to a tram driver who had stopped on the bridge nearby. I sang my heart out. Then, when the show was over, I went on an impromptu pub crawl, and met a man who claimed to be Bez (from the Happy Monday)’s cousin. It was one of the best nights out of my life. To paraphrase Elbow’s One Day Like This; one day like that a year would see me right.
The beauty of it was that there was no plan. There were no tickets for Elbow, you just had to turn up and hope you got in. Similarly, there was no order for the pub crawl, it was just a small group of friends ebbing and flowing through the drinking establishments of Manchester. I miss nights like that. I miss the spontaneity of it all — let’s just meet up for a drink, anything could happen.
There are a few reasons for it, but those free-flowing nights don’t really happen anymore. Partly it is getting older but, for me at least, distance also plays a part. I now live in Glasgow and most of my college friends still live in Manchester or the surrounding area so sometimes I feel like that eponymous Seldom Seen Kid (although, for the record, the real ‘seldom seen kid’ was Bryan Glancy, a friend of the band who died in 2006). At this precise moment, the coronavirus pandemic is stopping anybody getting together, so I guess we are all the seldom seen kid for now. And, I suppose, when I say I ‘miss nights like that’ what I am saying is, ‘I miss my friends.’
Nowadays, when I listed to Elbow, and specifically The Seldom Seen Kid, they remind me of my hometown of Manchester but also of nights out with friends, anywhere, and of the excitement of possibility. Whilst The Seldom Seen Kid isn’t really about that (there are songs about fixing a horse race, a tower crane driver and starting a band), Garvey himself has admitted that they “find themselves writing drinking anthems to friendship a lot” and that “it’s not a massive leap of the imagination to figure out why”.
Personally, I think of meeting up with people to tell the same stories over and over again, embellishing them ever so slightly each time so that they are unrecognisable from the truth, but that it also doesn’t matter. Remember when you lost your wallet? When you found it again? Remember that old girlfriend who came here? Remember when you lost her, found her again? Remember when we were here after it all, with a pint waiting on the table for you and an arm around the shoulder. We can’t do that at the moment, so we’ll do it via Zoom if necessary; we’ll always be here, even when we’re not.
The Seldom Seen Kid is, by the way, a very good album. But for me it is indelibly linked to friends old and new, young and old. And so, I guess the real reason for crowbarring this album into the top 50 list is as a testament to the importance of friendship.
This isn’t a mawkish mope, it is my way of trying to say a gleeful ‘thank you, for being there past, present and future’. It just so happens I am writing this the week that the UK governments have set out their ‘roadmaps’ out of lockdown and I have been watching on intently, cautiously optimistic as to when we can all be get together again for a nice pint — I’ll get a round in, then you can tell that story about losing your wallet again.
Obviously, I could just tell my friends how I feel. But that would show some sort of vulnerability and, as we know, that is strictly forbidden. Conveniently there’s a lyric on Friend of Ours, the final track of The Seldom Seen Kid, that sums it up nicely, so I’ll steal that:
“Before leaving get to the bar, no one around here makes you pay,
Never very good at goodbyes, so gentle shoulder charge,
Love you mate.”
Thanks for reading — over the course of 2021, I’ll be reviewing 50(ish) of the greatest albums ever recorded. You can see the list here.
