When Elbow frontman Guy Garvey split from his longtime partner Emma Unsworth, he felt he had to get away. Having developed an affection for New York, he upped sticks and moved to the Big Apple. The imagery and characters of this song are adapted from scenes he observed at JFK airport lounge as Garvey flitted back and forth between New York and his home city of Manchester. "In an airport lounge, the whole world is going its separate ways, under this cloud of anticipation that exists in all airports," he told The Independent. "It throws up where you're going, where you've been, what you like, what you don't, and it gave me an opportunity to create some new characters in Red Bob and The Ivory Host, who were a man with high blood-pressure desperate for a drinking-partner in a plastic Irish pub in JFK airport, and our very pallid but austere barman."
The Lunette part of the song is a love song to three things; smoking, drinking and a woman.
When Elbow frontman Guy Garvey split from his longtime partner Emma Unsworth, he felt he had to get away. Having developed an affection for New York, he upped sticks and moved to the Big Apple. The imagery and characters of this song are adapted from scenes he observed at JFK airport lounge as Garvey flitted back and forth between New York and his home city of Manchester. "In an airport lounge, the whole world is going its separate ways, under this cloud of anticipation that exists in all airports," he told The Independent. "It throws up where you're going, where you've been, what you like, what you don't, and it gave me an opportunity to create some new characters in Red Bob and The Ivory Host, who were a man with high blood-pressure desperate for a drinking-partner in a plastic Irish pub in JFK airport, and our very pallid but austere barman."
The Lunette part of the song is a love song to three things; smoking, drinking and a woman.