Tuesday 12/02/08 Elbow @ Porchester Hall, London

Elbow fans can't dance. Not in the kind of awkward, shuffling way those fans of, say, My Bloody Valentine would dance. But in a bizarre, hip-swivelling, pelvic-thrusting, arm waving, utterly, utterly awful way. It's not really their fault – Guy Garvey's troop of merrily miserable troubadours have always been a contrary mix of wrist-slitting social commentary and uplifting Northern Soul – but nothing can excuse the tear-your-eyes-out mixture of body-pop and shoegaze taking place in front of Gigwise.

It's all mildly ironic that this, a one-off gig to celebrate the launch of the Bury-based band's fourth album, 'The Seldom Seen Kid', is taking place in the swanky surroundings of West London's Porchester Hall – an actual real-life ballroom, from which a majority of the band's fans would be evicted from on any other night of the year. Crucially though, tonight seems to be the night that Elbow's stars are aligning, as Garvey puts it "The new, improved, classy Elbow", and who would begrudge a bit of victorious gyrating from their eager public?

Superlative critical response to Elbow's previous three records has never turned into huge sales for this most wonderful of bands – perhaps it's because frontman Guy Garvey's heart is worn so prominently on his sleeve that his self-confession tales of love and loss stick in the ersatz throats of U2 and Razorlight fans. Or perhaps that by daring to push the boundaries of their art even a little – only Radiohead have employed electonica in their music more successfully in the past few years – they are open to be labelled a 'difficult' band. Whatever the problem has been in the past, 'The Seldom Seen Kid' should push them into orbit – all of the five new tracks premiered tonight sound thrilling, ready for a waving mass of festival hands and the bedrooms of lovesick twenty-somethings.

Opener 'Station Approach', from their last record 'Leaders of the Free World', is utterly astonishing – one of the highlights of a nigh-on perfect evening. It begins quietly before swelling to a hypnotic, pounding climax with Garvey repeating the line "Be everything to me tonight" over and over again as the musicians strain the upper reaches of their amplifiers – turned to eleven, one would suspect. It's a moment that simply knocks spots off Coldplay's recent output, a band that Elbow are often, and unfairly, compared to. Newbie 'One Day Like This' is their most crowd-friendly since 2003's 'Grace Under Pressure', Garvey taking the audience through a wonderful singalong/ mime of "Open up your curtains/ One day a year like this will see me right".