More power to Elbow

What's in a name: Elbow thought up the Leaders of the Free World album title during the G8 but, despite having a few strong views on the Iraq war, Garvey insists they have no political agenda.

THE opening song on Elbow's new album is called 'Station Approach' - a celebration of the band's Manchester homecoming via the train to Piccadilly. It also heralds the return of a major international talent with nothing to declare but breathtaking originality and heart-on-the-sleeve lyrics.

Singer Guy Garvey is remarkably sanguine when it comes to the tiresome Coldplay comparisons which still occasionally and inexplicably plague the quintet. "If somebody who can finance you says, 'I see you guys as the next Coldplay,' then you go, yeah, whatever you want, fine." He laughs with the recollection of feeling beyond patronised when their song publisher pronounced them as being "Radiohead for girls". "I just said what a great title that would make for our second album," says Garvey...

...Listening to him sing is to wonder how Peter Gabriel might have sounded had he gone to a Lancashire comprehensive rather than Charterhouse public school.

There is an intelligence at work in Elbow's songs that is honest and perceptive, even putting a new spin on that common currency of the pop song, lost love...