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Amazon.co.uk review:
This Is
Music: The Singles: 92 – 98 represents a landmark
collection of releases from one of the most celebrated British bands of the
last decade, The Verve.
Richard Ashcroft and his reformed band of northern souls stood astride the
mid-nineties like a colossus, after finally producing the masterpiece that
everyone knew they were capable of (1997's Urban Hymns). A collection
of their most successful work is long overdue, particularly with Ashcroft's
solo career stalled after two below average efforts.
This rolls out the singles
from their three albums, early EPs and the obligatory new tracks too, both
unreleased from the Urban Hymns sessions. Interesting though these
collector's items are, the real treasure lies in simply rediscovering, like
Suede, what a great singles band they were. Witness the grandeur and scope
of "History" – with it's epic (if overdone) strings and classic Ashcroft
delivery or the genuine melancholy of "The Drugs Don't Work." They became,
as Oasis and the Stone Roses did, a band of the people; of the nation. The
era-defining "Bittersweet Symphony", grand without the Gallagher's arrogance,
somehow intellectual in place of their brutish stupidity, didn't so much
carve The Verve a path as stomp one through the crowd. --Ben Johncock
Allmusic.com review:
The '90s were filled with pop
supernovas -- bands that burned brightly for one or two albums then
sputtered to an anticlimactic conclusion. Of these bands, the Verve were one
of the largest, perhaps because they imploded not once but twice. The first
time, they collapsed following the release of their second album,
Northern Soul, in 1995. They regrouped in the following year to record
Urban Hymns, their commercial breakthrough, but lingering tensions
between vocalist/songwriter Richard Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe tore
the group apart for a second and final time. They never became the global
superstars that their early partisans predicted -- it would have been hard
to compete with Oasis during their heyday -- but as the 2004 collection
This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 proves, the group was too arty, too low-key,
too psychedelic, too English eccentric to be superstars. Some might have
said the same thing about Radiohead, but that Oxford quintet had a heavy
dose of U2-styled anthemic arena rock and Thom Yorke's melodies were bigger
than Ashcroft's subtle, swirling tunes. Also, Radiohead started out
relatively straightforward and grew strange, while the Verve took the
opposite path, beginning as post-shoegazer neo-psychedelics and ending as
tasteful traditionalists. This Is Music -- which is the natural and
perfect title for this compilation -- doesn't chart this journey, since it
winds through the group's 12 singles, including the first LP appearance of
their debut single, "All in the Mind," with little regard for chronology
before ending with two OK outtakes from Urban Hymns ("This Could Be
My Moment," "Monte Carlo"). This sequencing doesn't emphasize similarities
throughout the body of work -- Urban Hymns is a decidedly less
adventurous album than its two predecessors, which doesn't make it a lesser
album -- but it doesn't hurt the collection, either, since it flows like a
good concert. This collection also confirms the suspicion that the Verve
were an album-oriented band that best conveyed its mission and sense of
purpose on its singles, which expertly captured the feeling, spirit, and
mood of each full-length record. And that's why This Is Music winds
up being definitive: distilled to their singles, the Verve still sound
vibrant and slightly mysterious, wiping away memories of the band's
dissolution and Ashcroft's pedestrian solo career, preserving the moment
when the group sounded as if the world were at their feet. --Stephen Thomas
Erlewine
Pitchforkmedia.com review:
He may be better known for his
anthems, his ego, and his excess, but Richard Ashcroft also tells a good
story. And as the new career-spanning compilation This Is Music: The Singles
92-98 reveals, the history of his band, The Verve, is a good story as well.
They began by playing sprawling, kaleidoscopic, heavens-scraping jams. These
60s-style improvisatory mindfucks were then edited down into the slightly
less sprawling tracks that comprise the group's 1993 debut, A Storm in
Heaven, an intoxicating amalgam of psychedelica and shoegaze.
Then Verve became The Verve (jazz 1, rock 0) and started to discipline their
diaphanous noisescapes with traditional British songcraft. They released an
ecstasy-laden promise of even better things to come, 1995's A Northern Soul.
Ashcroft earned praise in song from the biggest band in Britain, Oasis. And
then the band broke up.
But Ashcroft, the story's iconic hero as well as its raconteur, had
prophesied that his band would secure a place in the rock'n'roll firmament.
And lo, it was so: The band reformed, and 1997's decade-defining Urban Hymns
almost made up for the then-recent demise of Britpop.
Sure, Ashcroft went on to release solo albums littered with self-indulgent
drivel, and masterful guitarist Nick McCabe has been uncharacteristically
quiet. Meanwhile, bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury's royalty
checks sure aren't writing themselves! (Late addition Simon Tong? He found a
gig as Blur's new Graham Coxon.) That just means it's time for the next
phase of the story: The singles compilation, complete with "new" tracks. If
The Verve's tale is Ashcroft's epic, This Is Music is his short-stories
anthology.
Here's where the narrative starts to fall apart. The disc doesn't follow any
recognizable order. So if newcomers want a quick taste of the early Verve's
vast, submarine jamming, they'll have to skip to tracks five and eleven,
respectively, to hear rare-ish singles "She's a Superstar" and "Gravity
Grave." The conch-shaped guitar lines of first single "All in the Mind"
announce the group's arrival to the world on track nine. The Ride-like
shimmer of "Slide Away" (track two) and the droning anthemics of "Blue" (track
seven) represent the debut full-length admirably, though a little context
would be nice.
On the other hand, the sophomore album's "This Is Music" makes a stirring
opener for any compilation, perfectly melding McCabe's searing guitar lines
with Ashcroft's spacey vocals. "If love is a drug then I don't need it,"
Ashcroft declares. The second single from the second record, "On Your Own,"
introduced audiences to the acoustic balladry-- with handclaps!-- that would
reach full bloom on Urban Hymns. It also proved that Ashcroft suffers from
the same lyrical banality that often marked Noel Gallagher's compositions. "Gotta
get rid of this hole inside," Ashcroft chants, and it sounds like a
revelation rather than a tired cliche. Two tracks earlier, "History" is
another A Northern Soul ballad, with strings from John Lennon's "Mind Games"
and enough rarefied sadness for a Ford Madox Ford novel.
This Is Music boasts four songs from The Verve's masterpiece, Urban Hymns,
and all are as revelatory now as they must have been when they capped off
Ashcroft's Brit-rock bildungsroman. "Sonnet" verges on sappy, but some of
Ashcroft's Bono-tastic bombast makes the song soar. "Lucky Man" applies the
same formula to existential angst and what Whitney Houston called "The
Greatest Love of All." Both ballads are good, but neither can compare to "The
Drugs Don't Work," a marvel of subtlety amid world-weary lyrics-- "All this
talk of getting old is bringing me down"-- and understated strings. This was
a hit because it's fucking great. It's that simple.
"Bittersweet Symphony" marches brazenly through a day in the life, staring
head-on at the immutability of the human spirit and our paradoxically
mercurial nature ("I'm a million different people"); both realities are true,
the song suggests. In America, it's The Verve's only well-known song, but
it's one hell of a legacy.
Of course, The Verve also are to blame for the uneven British wuss-rock of
Travis (once likened to "cheese on toast" by Damon Albarn), Keane, and The
Veils. They've even influenced American bathos-mongers like Howie Day, who's
been known to cover "The Drugs Don't Work" in his tantrum-filled live shows.
Alas, the two bonus tracks at the end of the compilations don't bolster The
Verve's defense. Urban Hymns-era unreleased track "This Could Be My Moment"
is elegant, uplifting, and as catchy as a TV jingle, but it lacks the world-conquering
vision of the songs that actually made that album. "Monte Carlo" features a
pleasant bass groove, but as soon as I finish this sentence I'll have
forgotten how it goes.
In sum, This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 features 12 classics and two
superfluous tunes from the vault. If you already own the albums, you won't
have much use for this compilation. New fans ought to start with Urban Hymns
and work their way back, and the arbitrary track order here serves no one.
But the songs' quality remains undeniable, and a greatest-hits disc is
better than no Verve at all-- at least until Ashcroft writes the final
chapter with a "Behind the Music"-inspired reunion tour.
-Marc Hogan, November 19th, 2004
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