Elbow will play Asleep In The Back in full across three nights at The Ritz in Manchester, marking 25 years since the debut that established them. The shows run from 20 to 22 November and will pull in B-sides from the same period alongside the album itself.
Guy Garvey told NME the band deliberately avoided building an anniversary tour around the record. They wanted the shows to be more precious than that, aimed at people who were there the first time and never expected to hear the album played end to end. It was originally going to be a single night at The Ritz, but Garvey said that felt churlish, so they made it three.
The venue is not an incidental choice. Garvey described The Ritz as a fixture of Manchester's musical nightlife and said that at 16, before the band existed, he and several future members of Elbow could be found at its indie night. Headlining it under their own name, which happened around Asleep In The Back, was a marker in the band's early history.
Getting the album made at all took two collapsed record deals. Elbow signed to Island and recorded a version with Happy Mondays producer Steve Osborne, then lost the contract when Universal Music took Island over. They eventually re-recorded the album with Blur producer Ben Hillier, and Garvey says the industry frustration is audible in the result.
"By the time we made the final version of the album, we were really fucked off with the industry," he said, pointing to the long organ introduction of Any Day Now as an example of a band deciding to do what it wanted. Released on V2 in 2001, the record reached number 14 and earned the band their first Mercury Prize nomination, which they lost to PJ Harvey. They would win the prize in 2008 for The Seldom Seen Kid.
Garvey also flagged what is coming next. The follow-up to 2024's Audio Vertigo is being shaped in part by the David Bowie Lightroom experience, and he singled out Little Beast as the song he is most looking forward to playing live and Powder Blue as the one he is dreading, on the grounds that its long high notes were painful to sing when he was a much younger man. The anniversary run joins a busy stretch of indie catalogue revisits, and the dates are listed on the tour guide.
The facts
- The three shows run at Manchester's The Ritz from 20 to 22 November.
- Elbow will play Asleep In The Back in full plus B-sides from the era.
- The album was released on V2 in 2001 and reached number 14.
- It earned Elbow their first Mercury Prize nomination, losing to PJ Harvey.
- Two record deals collapsed before the album was made.
- The final version was recorded with Blur producer Ben Hillier.
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