Buffalo Music: Manchester Band delivers arena-sized emotions to Intimate Buffalo club

By Jeff Miers

We must’ve generated some good karma along the way. How else to explain what happened last Sunday, when Elbow included a Buffalo stop on their first North American tour in eons?

Catching this titanically gifted Mancunian band in the intimate, 750-capacity Electric City in Buffalo’s Theatre & Entertainment District felt surreal, to be sure. But it also felt like a gift, for those of us lucky enough to be in attendance. After all, this band headlines festivals and major gigs throughout the UK, and recently logged its 4th consecutive #1 UK album, with the 2024 release of Audio Vertigo. Getting to spend such up close and personal time with a band of this stature somehow felt like more than we deserved.

Elbow’s sound is massive, grandiose, dynamic, and emotionally resonant. The band’s track record is nigh on flawless, with at least 4 stone-cold classics nestled amongst ten studio albums (Build A Rocket Boys, The Seldom Seen Kid, The Take Off and Landing of Everything, and Audio Vertigo are all absolute essentials, in my view.) Throughout their 25-plus year career, Elbow’s experimental bent and sense of musical curiosity have steered them well, ensuring a freshness and vitality in a sound that exists above and beyond revolving trends and shifting tastes.

And yet, on this side of the pond, they are adored only by a small, highly devout audience.

I don’t get it. But on Sunday, I wasn’t complaining.

Fronted by the eminently affable tower of vocal prowess that is Guy Garvey, and featuring the considerable gifts of keyboardist Craig Potter, guitarist Mark Potter, bassist Pete Turner and drummer Alex Reeves, augmented by female backing vocalists, a violinist and a multi-instrumentalist, Elbow treated the Electric City gig like a headlining set at Glastonbury. This may have been a small, intimate club gig by Elbow standards, but despite Garvey’s unfailingly charming, down-to-earth banter with the crowd, the band presented its full lights & sound spectacle, and offered a nearly two-hour, 18-song set of tunes that touched on nearly every album in the Elbow canon, while favoring material from Audio Vertigo and The Seldom Seen Kid.

Taking the stage with the dynamic swagger of “Things I’ve Been Telling Myself For Years,” Elbow revealed its transformative power immediately, summoning a sound that reached heavenward, a din at once spacious and grandiose. Garvey’s voice was in resplendent form, and by the time we hit the chorus of “Lovers’ Leap,” it was clear that the band’s sound tech was up to meeting whatever sonic challenges a room like Electric City might’ve posed. The sound was simply magnificent, crisp, clean and clear, and it stayed that way throughout.

Elbow, Electric City, Buffalo, NY. 9/28/25.Photos by Kim Miers.

I’ve always heard a bit of Genesis-era Peter Gabriel in Garvey’s beautiful vocal melodies, and in fact, there is some early Genesis influence apparent in the whole band’s sound at times, though it would be more than a leap to suggest that this was ‘prog rock,’ in the pejorative sense. More like a progressive alternative art-rock aesthetic that allows room for sonic density, blazing rhythms, horn stabs, balladry, and a Mancunian sense of funkiness, I’d say. (A mouthful, I know, but it’s all in there, I swear.) Some of the aching ethereality of Radiohead creeps into the Elbow room as well, lending to the air of otherworldliness in the ensemble sound.

One can spot the ghosts of influences, yes, but Elbow is doing something that is its own.

Take the mid-set strut and sway of “Balu,” a song that boasts both Latin dance and electronic undercurrents, but is also a driving alt-rocker, and a vehicle for Garvey’s soul-stirring and startlingly in-tune vocal forays.

Or “The Birds,” one of the most heart-rending psychedelia-tinged ballads I’ve ever heard, as it moves through its circular harmonic chord progression, buoyed by evocatively poetic lyrics, lush vocal harmonies and Garvey’s spine-tingling croon.

There really is nothing else quite like this music. It is governed by its own interior logic and follows a delightfully singular path. It comes from the hearts and imaginations of the band members, and it hits the listener squarely in both.

An absolutely magical, unforgettable night, then. More than we deserved, perhaps. But we’ll honor the gift, by remembering it for a good, long time.

Elbow

Electric City, Buffalo, NY

September 28, 2025

Things I’ve Been Telling Myself for Years

Lovers’ Leap

Adriana Again

The Bones of You

Summertime

Kindling

Her to the Earth

Balu

The Seldom Seen Kid

Mirrorball

Station Approach

The Birds

My Sad Captains

Magnificent (She Says)

Sober

Grounds for Divorce

Encore:

Lippy Kids

One Day Like This

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