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Here is some information on The Verve.URBAN HYMNS to be precise.
Just who put the hype in hyperbole? The British music press, of course -- understatement simply isn’t their style. Take, for instance, the story of The Verve. When this north England five-piece reformed, regrouped and released Urban Hymns (Virgin) a few months back, Britain’s rock hacks broke out their thesauruses. A triumphant testament to the redemptive power of rock’n’roll, screamed Melody Maker magazine. Arch rival NME countered with their own headline: fierce magic spun by a restless, fearless band. High praise, indeed.
Well, doing things in moderation isn’t The Verve’s style, either. Frontman, mouthpiece and key songwriter Richard Ashcroft recently told Rolling Stone that he’s not interested in being someone who people realize was great 50 years after he’s dead... we want to be a modern-day Led Zeppelin. Accordingly, this Brit five-piece do not so much write pop tunes as construct eargasms -- widescreen epics that swell and build and then explode, much like the hottest, wildest, most uninhibited romp you’ve ever had.
The opening cut of Urban Hymns, Bitter Sweet Symphony, sums up their eargasmic style perfectly. Strings soar and swoop like mad birds, while Richard Ashcroft’s piercing, keening vocals -- part Bono breast-beating, part sexy croon -- burst out of the melee, ready to kill you or kiss you.
The Drugs Don't Work (from Urban Hymns) Although a well-publicized battle with the firm of Jagger, Richards and Oldham has tainted the song slightly -- the band lightly sampled the Stones’ The Last Time and paid the price -- it’s still a major slab of rock opulence. And their anthem for the disaffected of the world, The Drugs Don’t Work, is just as epic, Ashcroft insisting while the drugs don’t work, I know I’ll see your face again, as more strings and towering guitars stage a duel in the background. Sad? It’s bloody heartbreaking.
Coming together in the early 1990s, the core of the band -- Ashcroft, bassist Simon Jones, skin-man Peter Salisbury and guitarist Nick McCabe -- first met in school and were then reunited in the unemployment benefits line. Music was an obvious career choice, as it is for many Northern England dreamers and schemers.
"We started with the basics: the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield", Ashcroft stated. "Then we got into soul, then jazz...John Lennon, Miles Davis, Big Star." Just as with the epic duo of Bittersweet and Drugs, the rest of their so-called comeback album (the band split in 1995, clearly unable to cope with the pressure of being Britpop’s next big thing) is equally eclectic -- and electric.
Sonnet, a mellow strum with some squiggly guitar figures thrown in by axemen Nick McCabe and the laid-back One Day might use a smaller canvas, yet both swagger under a sense of importance, a stone-cold seriousness. Can’t you see there’s beauty in life? Ashcroft asks, as if no one else has ever worked it out before. Like their sonic soulmates Oasis -- who only a few years back actually opened up for The Verve -- it’s not so much what this five-piece say as how they say it. They insist you listen up, even if their message isn’t completely earth-shattering.
In rock’n’roll as in life, however, you can have too much of a good thing. The song The Rolling People gets bogged down in flashiness; style wrestling substance into submission. Five minutes is a couple too many in my book; sadly, this track ebbs and flows for seven. Neon Wilderness also suffers from seriously heavy legs. Catching the Butterfly, however, gets the freaky, funky rhythmic shuffle down more seductively. Its surrender-to-the-groove vibe hints at the much underrated Charlatans UK -- as does This Time -- while wah-wah pedals cop a fair workout and Ashcroft slips on his thinking cap, reflecting upon the life he’s lived up until now. I know there is time, he chants, mantra-style. Again, it’s not important what Ashcroft says; everything hinges upon the emphatic manner he uses to preach to the perverted.
Sure, with their mix of pure pop, dreamy, druggy psychedelia and big-screen lushness, The Verve are a cut’n’paste collage of much of the classic Britpop that has preceded them. You may as well just throw a net over everyone from The Beatles to The Stone Roses, cause you’ll find traces here. But rather than imitate, The Verve innovate, crafting a sound that throbs with joy and sobs with sorrow. And, crucially, they don’t forget to rock. A searing riff tears through Space And Time like forest fire, playing the perfect foil to Ashcroft’s desperate plea to some miscreant lover. I just can’t make it alone, he cries, as McCabe’s guitar threatens full meltdown.
In the sweltering closer, Come On, Ashcroft yells his instructions from the midst of an explosion of guitars. Come on, there’s only one life, he taunts, insistently, madder than a hound in heat. This backs up Ashcroft’s claim to Rolling Stone that if you come from where we come from, you’ve got to have a Muhammad Ali, we’re-the-greatest attitude. All goes to prove The Verve are true believers: in themselves, their big sound and their even bigger pop dreams.
The Verve - Urban Hymns (Hut) There are two things to note about The Verve's Urban Hymns. One: it is a long album, running at 75 minutes and 51 seconds. Two: for the majority of the time it is 75 minutes and 51 seconds of honest, open, deeply personal confessions from lead singer Richard Ashcroft, so much so that perhaps it should be renamed Richard's Urban Hymns. Starting with the epic anthem Bitter Sweet Symphony with its orchestrated strings and poignant lyrics ("Trying to make ends meet/ You're a slave to the money then you die"), The Verve prove that their lyrics pack a far mightier punch than anything by Oasis ever could. However, this outstanding first number does not overshadow the rest of the album - on the contrary, it sets it up for what becomes an emotional rollercoaster about true life and love. We are led into a box full of memories with Sonnet, where Richard achingly declares he is now ready for love: "Yes there 's love if you want it - don't sound like a sonnet - my love." And it is on the slower, more melodic songs that his vocal talents and lyrical astuteness come to the fore. The tear-jerking confessions of The Drugs Don't Work follow, with the self-realisation of: "The drugs don't work, they just make you worse." Then on to the desperate pleas of Space and Time, which is the History (remember that standout track from the album Northern Soul?) of Urban Hymns. The cries of "I just can't make it alone - no" maintain the emotional pace, and many a rocky relationship will falter alongside this track. However, you realise just what makes up The Verve - The Verve and not Richard Ashcroft and The Verve - with songs such as The Rolling People and Come On. These tracks are as zingy and zesty as a freshly squeezed orange and pop your eyes back into their sockets, re-emphasising that this is what The Verve are all about - soaring guitars and rocking rhythms. The Verve's Mancunian counterparts described them as the best band in the world after Oasis. This is possibly the understatement of the year, as Oasis can only ever dream of the heights that The Verve have reached. Sheer brilliance.
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