A Northern Soul

There are some songs I really really like but they also whiff completely on a few. When they hit, they really fucking hit it though. 3.5/5

Imagine if these guys could produce more songs like their big hit. This album was one track after another of the nasaly vocals and backing instrumentation that gets old realllll fast. Nothing stood out to me. A big, fat, hour+ yawn.

Why does the verve deserve two albums? This is just filler. Good filler but still filler.

Day1035 - i feel like i’ve been hearing about the genius of richard ashcroft for thirty years and he’s had one hit.

T.b.c

Ok

The Verve are a band who sprawl. It's practically a defining characteristic. Their music expands into whatever space is available, guitars become environments rather than instruments, rhythmic patterns acquire hypnotic qualities, and Richard Ashcroft alternates between proclaiming his personal revelations and disappearing into the enormous noise surrounding him. At their best, there's something almost sacramental about the experience. At their worst, you begin to wonder whether anyone involved has remembered that the listener might eventually want to go home. *A Northern Soul* contains extraordinary examples of both tendencies. It's an album of enormous musical imagination, genuine emotional intensity and occasionally devastating songwriting, but also one that repeatedly fails to distinguish between the pleasure of making music and the experience of listening to the results. It's intoxicating, sometimes exhausting, and ultimately rather less accomplished than the band it represents. I came to it with considerable affection for The Verve, having already given *Urban Hymns* five stars. I also have some history with this material. I was among approximately 30,000 people watching the band at Haigh Hall in 1998, and their music occupied a considerable part of my life during the 1990s. But that familiarity makes me more interested in understanding what separates their merely excellent work from their genuinely extraordinary achievements, rather than giving everything the benefit of the doubt. The album announces itself with “A New Decade”, although I immediately found the fade-in irritating. I've never been particularly fond of opening tracks that emerge from silence as though somebody has accidentally turned up the mixing desk halfway through a performance. In this instance, however, there's a certain appropriateness to it. We're joining a band already in motion, and motion is central to what Ashcroft is describing. His lyric is unusually coherent for a piece of Verve psychedelia. It's almost a position paper. He seems to be announcing the beginning of the band's own decade, a moment when their music will finally be heard and their ambitions realised. But that declaration is undermined by his recurring uncertainty about how long he can keep running and what exactly he's running from. It's both a declaration of intent and an interrogation of that intent. Things are happening and, simultaneously, not happening. There's tremendous momentum without an entirely convincing destination. “This Is Music” answers that uncertainty with one of the album's finest performances. Here is Ashcroft at his messianic best, simultaneously the leader and a member of the pack. His declarations about his working-class origins, his hometown and the right to have his voice heard are personal, but carry a collective dimension. He isn't simply announcing his own exceptional destiny. He's claiming recognition for the world from which he emerged. This becomes particularly pointed when considered against The Verve's circumstances. Oasis, who had previously supported them, were becoming enormously successful, while The Verve remained comparatively marginal. There must have been considerable frustration in watching friends and contemporaries achieve the recognition they believed was within their own grasp. But “This Is Music” isn't simply an expression of professional resentment. It's something closer to a statement of faith. Ashcroft rejects the promise of religious salvation while appropriating its language of revelation. Music itself becomes the means of deliverance. This reminded me of Kevin Rowland's relationship with soul music. For Rowland, music can be an instrument of emotional cleansing, a means of stripping away pretence and exposing the truth. Ashcroft pursues something similar through an entirely different musical vocabulary. Salvation comes through The Verve's almighty noise. And what magnificent noise it is. The opening bass and tambourine even sent me on an unexpected excursion into Sleaford Mods territory. I suddenly recognised the musical connection with “Urine Mate (Welcome to the Club)” from *Austerity Dogs*, hearing Jason Williamson roaring in my imagination before I'd consciously identified the source of the association. It prompted an entertaining digression about Roxy Rob, the Nottingham clothing retailer named in Williamson's lyric, and the cruelty of the respectable onlookers who mock his alcoholism. The association was particularly pleasing because Roxy Rob had himself supplied clothing to Northern Soul dancers. A rather improbable route back to the album's title. Then The Verve change gear completely. “On Your Own” returns us to Ashcroft the acoustic songwriter, and suddenly all the evangelical certainty of the preceding track gives way to something painfully intimate. The man who has just dismissed the need for love now desperately wants somebody to fill the emptiness within him. The song begins with a longing for human connection but develops into an acknowledgement of the solitude that brackets human existence. We arrive alone, depart alone, and seek companionship in the intervening years. Yet Ashcroft complicates that apparently universal proposition by introducing personal dishonesty and the damage done to relationships. There's an important distinction between wanting somebody to fill an emptiness and wanting to rid oneself of that emptiness altogether. The repeated insistence suggests a man becoming increasingly desperate to escape something inside himself. What makes the song so successful, however, is its musical construction. An intensely private account of loneliness becomes a communal singalong. Thousands of people can proclaim their existential solitude together, temporarily experiencing precisely the connection the lyric fears may ultimately be impossible. That's a remarkable achievement, and evidence that Ashcroft can be an exceptionally accomplished songwriter when his emotional directness is matched by melodic clarity. “So It Goes” develops the same emotional territory, but in much more specifically autobiographical terms. The philosophical proposition becomes the predicament of a man emerging from the collapse of a long-term relationship, attempting to reconcile loss, wounded pride and emotional dependence. The repeated references to solitude connect it directly with “On Your Own”, but the drinking and self-pity are far less abstract. One of the pleasures of this track is Peter Salisbury's drumming. His touch is exquisite, particularly the little ghost notes on the snare that give the rhythm such delicacy and movement. What impresses me most isn't technical complexity but judgement. He understands how much information the music needs and how to supply it without dominating the arrangement. He's capable of making the rhythm feel busy without making the music sound busy. That observation became increasingly important as the album progressed, because my developing criticisms had very little to do with the abilities of the individual musicians. Their collective playing is often magnificent. The weaknesses lie elsewhere. The title track returns to full-scale Wigan psychedelia, and gathers together many of the album's recurring anxieties. There are references to Ashcroft's origins, parental disapproval, relationships, drugs, identity and the search for home. Above all, there is the repeated fear of dying alone. The printed lyric sheet fails to convey how insistently Ashcroft returns to that declaration. In the actual performance, it becomes an extended incantation, repeated until the words begin to function less as information than as ritual. This is music as sacrament again, but with a troubling difference. Religious incantations often promise deliverance through repetition. Ashcroft's central declaration offers no assurance of salvation whatsoever. He's confronting his fear by repeatedly invoking it, while the band surrounds him with an increasingly enveloping musical experience. The contrast is extraordinary. He proclaims isolation while participating in an act of collective creation. The music appears to offer the transcendence that his personal circumstances cannot provide. There's also something revealing in the relationship between this song and “On Your Own”. Earlier, Ashcroft was preoccupied with an intolerable absence inside himself. Here, he's repeatedly describing something within him that he cannot release. Emptiness and excess become different manifestations of the same distress. By this point, I was beginning to recognise an unusually coherent emotional argument running through the record. Death, desertion and connection appear everywhere. Ashcroft alternates between needing human intimacy and resisting the vulnerability it entails. He wants salvation through music, yet remains uncertain that even this extraordinary collective experience can resolve his loneliness. But while the album's emotional concerns are concentrated, its musical structures are considerably less disciplined. “Brainstorm Interlude” brought this into particularly sharp focus. I found myself thinking that *A Northern Soul* sounds rather like *Revolver* might have sounded if the Beatles had started with “Tomorrow Never Knows” and then recorded thirteen further songs exploring its possibilities. That comparison isn't entirely facetious. Both records are interested in repetition, altered perception, incantation and the transformation of conventional musical materials into overwhelming sensory experiences. The difference is economy. “Tomorrow Never Knows” is an extraordinarily disciplined piece of psychedelia. Its radical sonic environment has been constructed, edited and organised with tremendous precision. The Beatles offer an overwhelming experience, then conclude it before the effect is exhausted. The Verve seem rather more interested in sustaining the altered state than establishing its ideal duration. “Brainstorm Interlude” is enjoyable, and contains some fascinating musical material, but at five minutes and eleven seconds it seems to me a prime candidate for editing. A different producer might have selected its strongest passages, restructured the material, perhaps repeated a particularly effective phrase, and produced something no less psychedelic but considerably more purposeful. My thoughts went to *Something Else by The Kinks*, an apparently absurd comparison until one recognises that both records raise questions about musical economy. Ray Davies can establish a complete emotional or social world within three minutes, and have enough time left to introduce another character. The Verve sometimes spend considerably longer sustaining one musical sensation. This isn't inherently wrong. Music doesn't have to proceed narratively, or even develop in a conventional sense. But there is a difference between repetition that transforms an experience and repetition that merely extends it. Having some personal familiarity with the effects of ecstasy, I recognise how immensely pleasurable sustained repetition can become within an altered state of consciousness. The desire to remain inside a particular sensation can overwhelm any interest in moving beyond it. That doesn't establish why particular decisions were made during these sessions, but it certainly informed my response to the music. “Drive You Home” exposes another aspect of the same problem. Initially I wondered whether its extraordinary slowness explained the duration. It's positively stoner-paced. But the more I listened, the more I became convinced that the principal weakness was not tempo, but composition. Ashcroft's vocal seems messily extemporaneous, as though he's trying to discover a melody while performing rather than expressing one that has already been properly developed. The emotional material is present, but the melodic armature is insufficient. This matters because a slow song has fewer places to hide. Without rhythmic urgency, an uncertain melodic line becomes more conspicuous. The atmosphere cannot indefinitely compensate for the absence of a compelling composition. And this brought me to Owen Morris. Morris was employed partly because of his ability to capture The Verve as a functioning musical collective. He preferred recording the musicians performing together rather than laboriously constructing songs from separate studio takes. For a band so dependent upon collective improvisation and spontaneous interaction, there is obvious merit in that approach. But a good recording of a performance and a good finished record are not necessarily the same thing. What increasingly troubled me was the apparent absence of independent editorial judgement. Morris was closely involved in the band's notoriously excessive social environment, apparently functioning as something approaching another member of the group. The accounts of his behaviour during the sessions suggest that his participation extended well beyond ordinary studio camaraderie. I'm not suggesting that any particular weak melody or excessive passage can be directly attributed to intoxication. That's neither demonstrable nor necessary to the argument. What concerns me is the apparent failure to maintain the independence needed to exercise professional judgement over the finished material. The Verve needed a sober uncle. More precisely, they needed somebody prepared to preserve their remarkable musical spontaneity while challenging its first expression. The comparison with Oasis is revealing. Noel Gallagher exercised substantial control over Oasis's songwriting and musical direction, particularly on their first two albums. Morris could concentrate on capturing and magnifying the performances because much of the compositional structure had already been determined. The Verve were a looser, more democratic creative organisation. Ashcroft's songwriting, McCabe's guitar imagination and the collective interaction of Jones and Salisbury all helped generate the material. The boundary between composition, arrangement and improvisation was much less distinct. Applying a similarly permissive production philosophy to both groups may have produced very different results. I began wondering what someone with Teo Macero's approach might have achieved. Macero's work with Miles Davis demonstrates that spontaneous collective performances can become material for carefully constructed recorded compositions. The musicians can improvise freely while the producer subsequently exercises considerable imagination through editing, rearrangement and selection. Sometimes the intervention needn't be nearly so elaborate. A producer can coach a singer through a difficult passage, suggest alternative notes, recognise when a melody needs further work, or simply make sure that a vocal has been recorded with sufficient separation to allow subsequent revision. None of this requires sacrificing the live chemistry of the band. Morris's great strength was apparently his ability to enter the creative experience. His limitation may have been an insufficient willingness to stand outside it. “History” provides the most compelling demonstration of what The Verve could achieve when expansiveness and compositional discipline coincided. I regard it as their “Hey Jude”, and having experienced it among the enormous crowd at Haigh Hall, I stand by that comparison. It isn't without lyrical weaknesses. The opening borrows from William Blake's “London”, but Ashcroft seems rather more interested in acquiring the sound of poetic grandeur than reproducing the precision of Blake's language. Archaic constructions can be perfectly effective when their context earns them. Here, the language occasionally approaches the earnest verse found in a local newspaper's poetry corner. Yet the performance is extraordinary. The orchestral arrangement evokes John Lennon's solo work, particularly the strings of “Mind Games” and the arrangements associated with the Flux Fiddlers on *Imagine*. There are also moments of lyrical confrontation that recall “Gimme Some Truth”. But the most affecting feature is Ashcroft's extreme bluesing of notes. He bends and worries the melody, sometimes lingering between harmonic expectations, producing an emotional instability that contrasts beautifully with the grandeur of the strings. The song appears conversational, almost spontaneously discovered, but unlike “Drive You Home”, it possesses a carefully worked-out structure beneath that apparent wandering. That's tremendously difficult to achieve. It's rather like an exceptionally well-rehearsed theatrical monologue that persuades the audience they're watching somebody invent every thought in the moment. “History” keeps me on the edge of my seat because the apparent digressions are purposeful. The song knows where it's going even when the singer sounds uncertain. The single sleeve also prompted a delightful excursion into visual art. I recognised the characteristic language of Jenny Holzer's public installations, something that had been embedded in my visual memory through Sue's longstanding enthusiasm for Holzer's work. The collision between the existing artwork, its borrowed literary language and the band's own circumstances seemed particularly appropriate. It reminded me how portable Holzer's *Truisms* are, acquiring fresh implications with every change of location or context. It was one of those associations that emerged unexpectedly during the listening, but felt entirely appropriate to the experience of the record. The final stretch of the album reinforced both my admiration and my frustration. “No Knock on My Door” initially suggested a strung-out, psychedelicised Rolling Stones. Not because it possesses the Stones' characteristic blues shuffle — it emphatically doesn't — but because Ashcroft's dissolute vocal attitude and the blues-derived character of the music evoke something of their world. The Verve replace the Stones' rhythmic looseness and instrumental spaces with a dense psychedelic wall of sound. The lyric returns to the album's familiar emotional territory. There is gratitude for intimacy and discovery, but also insecurity, loss and a desperate desire for physical closeness. “Life's an Ocean” begins moodily and beautifully, with a glimpse of the remarkable musical dialogue between Ashcroft and McCabe that would become so effective on *Urban Hymns*. For a moment, the guitar seems to respond directly to the singer rather than simply create an environment around him. Then the song begins to wander. Prolonged repetitions gradually dissipate the impact of the opening, and I find myself once again wondering why nobody suggested that the band had already achieved everything necessary. “Stormy Clouds” begins with the promise of a story, yet apparently abandons narrative development almost immediately. The lyric contains images of departure, change and the possibility of a new horizon, but the music proceeds with an almost narcotic drag. There's an interesting contradiction between the movement suggested by the words and the inertia conveyed by the performance. But the contradiction isn't sufficiently developed to make the song wholly satisfying. By this stage, I was becoming increasingly conscious of a recurrent problem: Ashcroft often begins a song by making an exciting promise that its subsequent development never quite fulfils. And yet, even as my patience with the compositional looseness was diminishing, my admiration for the band's psychedelic abilities remained undiminished. As an opportunity to disappear into sound, *A Northern Soul* can stand alongside the finest shoegaze. McCabe's guitar creates a world in which conventional distinctions between foreground and background, accompaniment and atmosphere, become almost irrelevant. Jones and Salisbury give that world its physical substance, while Ashcroft alternates between occupying its centre and dissolving into its surroundings. The result can be magnificent. Then, as though determined to confirm every accusation of overstaying their welcome, The Verve finish with a six-minute-plus instrumental reprise. And I love it. Which complicates the whole argument rather wonderfully. The reprise makes no particular promise of narrative development or melodic revelation. It simply invites the listener to surrender to the band's sound. Immersion isn't a by-product of the composition; immersion is the composition. Judged on those terms, the piece is remarkably successful. The duration feels part of the experience rather than an obstacle to it. I began to realise that the album's apparent refusal to submit to external discipline wasn't merely a weakness. It was part of The Verve's artistic identity, and something to which they were clearly determined to commit. They hadn't had shape imposed upon them, and they weren't particularly interested in having it imposed now. That gives the album a coherence which isn't always apparent within its individual compositions. Its weaknesses are closely related to its strengths, and any attempt to remove the former without understanding the latter might easily destroy what makes the record extraordinary. The central question is therefore not whether The Verve should have been made to write shorter songs or abandon their psychedelic excesses. It's whether they could have made those qualities serve more consistently compelling musical purposes. *Urban Hymns* provides my answer. That record is longer than *A Northern Soul*, but it sprawls with purpose. The songwriting has stronger melodic architecture, more memorable vocal hooks and a much clearer relationship between Ashcroft's compositions and the band's enormous musical vocabulary. One of the most revealing differences is the scarcity of melodies on *A Northern Soul* that somebody might walk down the street humming. There are extraordinary vocal performances, but relatively few songs whose melodic identity remains as clearly defined once the surrounding sound has been removed. “The Drugs Don't Work” provides a particularly illuminating contrast. Ashcroft supplies an exceptionally well-constructed song, while McCabe's restrained guitar phrases become a second expressive voice. They answer and complement the vocal with astonishing economy. The relationship between the two musicians is understated, precise and emotionally devastating. McCabe can transform the meaning of a passage with a handful of notes. The silences matter as much as the playing. It's a clarity that *A Northern Soul* rarely achieves. McCabe was, of course, already fundamental to The Verve's sound on this album. The distinction isn't that his return somehow introduced musical imagination that had previously been missing. Rather, his return during the difficult recording of *Urban Hymns* helped a fragmented project coalesce into something much more fully realised. His musical identity is, if anything, more precisely fingerprinted on that later record. The interaction between Ashcroft's songwriting and McCabe's guitar imagination had become more productive because the compositions themselves more consistently provided something substantial to work around. That's what I mean by purposeful sprawl. Ashcroft has suggested that The Verve might have achieved enormous success earlier had they remained together long enough to promote “History”. He may be entirely right in commercial terms. But I wonder whether that interpretation risks confusing the success they might have achieved with the artistic development they subsequently undertook. A successful campaign for *A Northern Soul* might have persuaded the band that their methods required no reconsideration. The breakup and eventual reconstruction of The Verve created circumstances in which the relationship between their songwriting, arrangements and musical identity could be revisited. It's impossible to know whether the same development might have occurred without that rupture. But the extraordinary achievement of *Urban Hymns* demonstrates how much further the band could go without surrendering its essential character. In that sense, *A Northern Soul* is not simply an unsuccessful preliminary version of a later masterpiece. It's a fully inhabited musical world with its own convictions, achievements and contradictions. Its thematic coherence is striking. Ashcroft's repeated concerns with death, desertion and connection produce an emotional continuity that is sometimes stronger than the structures of the individual songs. His attempts to find salvation through music are both grandiose and profoundly vulnerable. The private anguish and the collective psychedelic experience continually illuminate one another. The musicianship is often exceptional, and the band's ability to construct an enveloping sonic environment is close to unparalleled within this particular corner of British rock. Yet I repeatedly found myself wanting someone to challenge the musicians, shape the performances and recognise when an exciting idea had become a finished composition. The album doesn't lack imagination. Sometimes it suffers from too much imagination being allowed to remain in its initial, unexamined form. That is why I cannot give it the highest rating. I was moved by it, frequently exhilarated by it, occasionally irritated by it and, at times, completely absorbed within it. Its best moments are genuinely extraordinary, and the sheer conviction of the performances makes its less successful passages easier to forgive than they might otherwise be. But admiration for the experience cannot entirely overcome my reservations about the finished work. *A Northern Soul* is a magnificent demonstration of what The Verve were capable of creating together. *Urban Hymns* is the more complete demonstration of what they were capable of achieving. The difference isn't that one is psychedelic and the other accessible, or that one is spontaneous and the other carefully constructed. Both records contain those qualities. The difference is judgement: knowing when to expand, when to concentrate, when to let a performance unfold, when to shape it, and when the most expressive contribution might be to play nothing at all. The Verve didn't need to become a different band. They needed to discover how to make the most of the extraordinary band they already were.

Not bad at all. It's the Verve. But it isn't interesting or exceptional.

Not much soul, but ok

Even the shorter songs somehow feel like they go on forever. I’m not generally an Ashcroft fan but even by his standards the vocals on ‘no knock on my door’ are shocking

The last album by The Verve that popped up here was a surprise high scorer from me. This didn’t suffer the same fate. It wasn’t terrible; it just wasn’t very interesting.

A surprise second Verve album on the list - I genuinely wasn't expecting another after Urban Hymns. Last time I got gradually worn down by the aural assault of Richard Ashcroft's voice over the full length of the album, and this is over an hour long again, so I'm buckling in. I could definitely have done without hearing him panting on A New Decade... I like the single I already know (History). I'm not sure I really liked anything else that much, and the cumulative effect was that I just found it really dull? Just not exciting for me. 2/5

The *nerve* to give me this album instead of Peter Gabriel's solo work... The songs are longwinding and are more focused on instrumentals. And they're all 5+ minutes long, which just makes this so one-note (2.5-3).

We don't need two Verve albums on this list, be so for real.

Album 352. A Northern Soul (https://open.spotify.com/album/4V4NjX74cttwZSKabeqMQc?si=5JmlLUy8SwmW-WQYfG7BFQ) — The Verve (1995) I like how much psychedelia there is in it. If it weren't psychedelic, it would be just shitty alternative british rock. But with it, it's okay 3/5 Liked: — Brainstorm Interlude — (Reprise)

This was not the first album that got me into The Verve, but I enjoy this album immensely. I mean Urban Hymns is a great album but yea everyone thinks all their songs are like Bittersweet Symphony, but more of their catalog resembles some of the deep cuts on Urban Hymns like Catching The Butterfly. Back to this album though, it is one that benefits from being played loud, especially the first two tracks. The rest sprinkles in some lovely ballads, and some good psych/shoegazey stuff. Good background music for the ones you aren't eventually singing along with, like i did. Biggest Hit - A New Decade Biggest Miss (if I had to choose) - Drive You Home Hidden Gem - No Knock On My Door

Really cool. I wasn't expecting how psych this was gonna be. It felt kind of like Counting Crows, but weirder and wilder. I enjoyed it.

Back then, The Verve had sort of faded into the background in the public eye compared to Oasis. Yet the two bands are quite different: To me, The Verve sound much more mature, while Oasis (and most other Britpop bands of the mid-'90s) were more part of the pop mainstream. “A Northern Soul” has turned out to be a pretty enjoyable alternative psychedelic blues-rock album that I, at least, really enjoy listening to. It might be a little monotonous at times, but given the overall high quality of the performance, I find that somewhat forgivable.

More psychedelic than id imagined. Pretty aimless stuff though.

Very average, with some high points and some pretty low points. 2.5 but rounding down because it had so much potential that it didn’t hit.

Bitter and/or sweet symphony

feels like if oasis was boring. and this band isn't bad but this record is justwhateva

Enjoyable but too long

2nd Verve album I’ve had and 2nd time I’ve really enjoyed it without being blown away.

It's an album from The Verve. The deluxe edition is very, very... Very long.

Starts strong but i prefer the albums that surround this.

If you like this, you may also like: literally any of guitar rock or slightly experimental guitar music. This couldn't be more one dimensional

Ugh.

I think I probably enjoy this music more than most, judging by the other reviews. I thought parts showed great emotion, and even some experimental sounds. Production and recording sounds great. The biggest downside is the record and a lot of the songs are just way too long. I think as a 38 minute record, with the songs cropped a bit and less of the droning on, this would be a very different and more successful record. As a whole I think it’s a high 3/5 for me.

On Your Own History

The first Verve album (and EPs) had some pretty decent stoner tracks. A Northern Soul, their second LP, smoothed off the rough edges and took a slight foot into the utter garbage that was Urban Hymns. 2 or 3 pretty great songs here (A New Decade, This is Music, Life’s an Ocean) and a couple of stinkers. It’s not as good as the debut. It’s miles better than the third LP.

The album as a whole is pretty boring, but it’s not a bad album

Kind of expected to like this because I like the song Bittersweet Symphony. Boy was I wrong. One of the most boring forgettable albums I have listened to. I listened twice and literally can’t remember one song.

really northern sounding

At first I thought this was going to be a pretty decent album. By the end it sounded like just a bunch of noise that ran together

Reminds me of that crappy band Adriana tried to produce in The Sopranos. Self-indulgent and mostly boring. I realized halfway that I wasn’t even paying attention to the lyrics. Boy was I disappointed when I tuned in. Not the worst I’ve heard, but not great.

Very cool album

Richard Ashcroft has an amazing voice and don't get me started on those cheekbones. The guitar playing was fairly cool especially during the last song. But pretty pretty meandering for me.

It didn't offend me. Sounds like these guys listened to a lot of U2.

I remember this album being a big deal after it came out, but it didn't pique my interest at the time. That goes for pretty much every big Britpop band of the era, especially Oasis. That said, I'll take this over Oasis any day. These songs are a lot more interesting and up my alley, so it's too bad I didn't pay attention till now. Then again it really doesn't matter. Regardless, I'm saving this to revisit & will check out the Verve's other stuff.

Fucking wankers!

Noe kult, noe slitsomt, fenger ikke helt men føles allikevel som bra kvalitet. Sterk 3

Irriterende å høre på

Blæ

Bråkete og litt slitsomt. Noen kule deler, men totalen er rimelig svak.

Sikkert urettferdig å sammenligne, men dette føltes som er dårligere versjon av «Urban Hymns», der bangerne var byttet ut med middels Oasis-låter. De bedre låtene her hadde vært velfungerende fyll-låter i «Urban Hymns», og «History hadde sklidd rett inn, men da holder det bare til middels

Same producer as definitely maybe. No wonder I thought it sounded a bit like oasis.

Why is their second album on here? A little research and apparently History was a breakout success. I laid flat and emotionless as it played, nothing special here, at least not now some 30+ years after release. Today, this is an album of filler, I can see why the label was going to drop them, I think Bittersweet Symphony was enough reason to add the band to the list as something that gained genuine traction after a few flubs like this one. Sometimes a second listen later on in the evening makes things feel different, that wasn't the case for this project. I'm now slightly offended anybody would consider this psychedelic. 2.4/5

I like Drive You Home, Life's an Ocean, and (Reprise). The rest pretty much sounds like middle-of-the-road 90s alt-rock, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't stick to my ribs. The production is a little too neat and bloodless and the vocals too prominent.

the last two tracks are really the best otherwise meh

Just sounded generic to me maybe I'm over exposed to the 90s Brit vibes. Strong band cohesion and instrumentals.

There were a few nice moments, but overall this was a singularly gloomy and dour listening experience.

It was fine?

Nada loco, si me gusto, pero no sobresale en lo que es este artista

this could’ve been really good, too bad

I like Ashcroft and The Verve but this ones not it. Too long and far too much going on within these songs. Less is more imo. However, History is a really good song

Mmm super Meh 4,5/10

Hadn't heard anything from them besides Bittersweet Symphony before, which I didn't care all that much about. A New Decade and This is Music are so good, then the rest of the album does nothing to keep that energy up. A full album of songs like the first two would be an automatic 5 stars from me. Such a confusing listen.

Where is the stand-out song that justifies a second album on The List? Let alone one that proves Bittersweet Symphony isn't just their only hit. Nothing here does that. It's a perfectly serviceable alternative rock album. it tries to be trippy but none of it is interesting enough to justify the 5 to 6 minute runtimes on all of these songs. In desperate need of an editor.

Yeah pretty decent. Just very samey.

Mediocre mid 2000s maudlin alt-rock. I've already forgotten it.

White straight male music... but depressed.

Reminded me of the first cure album and the oasis album. Actually loved the diversity of tracks, the story each song tells, and the swings of energy. Was a lil slow but still good stuff Favs This is music A northern soul No knock on my door

This was a tough listen. Nothing on this album is truly terrible, which is about the only good thing I can say about it (A Northern Soul gets pretty close though). When you zoom out this whole thing is just one big nothingburger. There are no memorable songs, and everything is painfully generic. This sounds like a bad mashup of Radiohead, Blur, and Oasis. If Britpop had horsemen, this album would be Pestilence. It’s frequently reverb’d, delayed, and distorted well past the point of enjoyment and lacking in the focused production and sharp songwriting that they’re trying to emulate. When it’s not, the off key singing rips you right out of your immersion. The album also meanders around like crazy. Why is almost every song 5+ minutes long? It suffers from the same self-indulgence that I called out in Made In Japan, except this was a studio album!! Good god man, spend some time on the cutting room floor. 2/10

I had forgotten how sloppy/forgettable albums can get after our last two. This album is wholly unremarkable because it isn’t sure what it wants to be. Once we reached the title track I realized I had to fight to stay focused because of the lack of depth to the music. The song writing is also reflective of the flippant approach The Verve takes with this album. Disappointed is a word I’d use after listening. Rating: 3/10

Notable Textzeile: In every man, in every hand In every kiss, you understand That living is for other men I hope you do understand Nick McCabe spielt jedes Mal etwas anderes. Sagt Producer Owen Morris. Ich muss sagen es ist schon sehr sehr gut, egal was es ist. Dieser Sound ist sehr besonders und absolut wiedererkennbar. Das kann man dann mögen oder nicht. Ähnliches gilt schließlich auch für Ashcrofts Stimme. Mir gefällt das sehr, auch wenn es über eine ganze Albumlänge manchmal doch etwas zu nölig und eintönig wird. Das ist dann auf den späteren Alben etwas abwechslungsreicher. Aber dafür ist das hier ab und zu auch mal etwas lauter, krachiger. Sehr gute 4,2.

Hatte mich drauf gefreut, bin aber enttäuscht. Sehr schleppend, vage, vor sich hin tunend. Sludge Britpop, irgendwie, oder bad trip Psychedelia. Lyrisch auch maximal handwedelnd, aber langsam und dabei ächzend, weil Gefühle und so.

Da bist kein Sonnet und keine Bittersweet Symphony, nichts was im Kopf bleibt. Dafür vieles bei dem man denkt "ah den Song hab ich doch schonmal gehört" und dann "ach ne doch nicht".

It's sleepy britpop, occasionally messes with some weird sounds, keeps things a little interesting

Couple of good songs on here, but I'm not adding any to my favorites list.

For a split second at the beginning of "On your own" I thought I had accidently put on Alice in Chains instead, disappointment followed

Noisier than 'Hymns" and not worse for it.

At least this album has some interesting things, because, otherwise, it would be painful to listen to this. The Verve is just a band that makes bland music. Not everything is bad, just soulless. It is also a band that tries so hard to replicate others while still keeping a very insipid melancholic and broken atmosphere, what gives their albums not just a tedious sound to listen to, but a very monotonous sound too. Although, this album is not bad. It is, at least, nice at certain moments. It is not enjoyable, but nice. At least, it is not Urban Hymns, which is even more insipid and generic. At least this one can be listened without thinking how boring it is. It is boring at times, tho, but not too much to make it difficult to get to the end (well, that ending should be shorter, if I may object).

Some of this is kind of groovy. I like Life's an Ocean a lot, for example--the whole last few songs are pretty psychedelic. Others seem just forgettable in the first half. If the whole album was like the later songs, this would be a 4, but as such more like a 3/5

Such a great surprise. Very psychedelic at times and loads of 90s fun. So you’re saying Oasis didn’t need to suck?

Hey, remember that band that did Bitter Sweet Symphony? No? Well here's an album they did that doesn't even have that on it. Somehow two albums from this band are more important to listen to than Chuck Berry, Patsy Cline, or Whitney Houston? Also - today's the 100th anniversary of John Coltrane's birth. That the list has two albums by the verve and only one by Coltrane is a travesty.

It’s okay

love this

Decent listen!

A Northern Soul, i.e., the one that doesn't have 'Bittersweet Symphony,' is surprisingly strong, given just how much Urban Hymns disappointed. This '95 album can hardly be said to be a part of the whole Britpop craze, & it's for this reason that it works & their next release doesn't. I don't think they are really psychedelic rock, or psychedelic at all, but The Verve, at least on this album, are firmly in that of milieu Spacemen 3 & Spiritualized. ''Cause I don't need no cause / When my feelings fall.' Ashcroft, tho he'll ne'er be a great lyricist, impresses linguistically on this record, but the creativity - the creativity that's missing on Urban Hymns - is all about what's going on at the instrumental level: loosey-goosey coinages meet down-to-earth funk.

This is just so so boring. More than an hour of the same guitar riffs and tones, with very flat vocal delivery, and the lyrics aren't anything interesting either. At times it sounds pretty alright, good even, but nothing justifies this album being over an hour long.

I thought about giving this a 3, but my brain got bored and completely tuned out the album about 4 tracks in. So it’s around a 2

This one might not have had any of the hits that 'Urban Hymns' had. Still, solid britpop record, though not one of my favourite bands of the genre.

gutes album von the verve hat viele gute lieder drinnen

Man I did not vibe with this; it just felt really aimless.

totally fine

All britpop from this era just sounds the same to me and seems to be mostly about being on drugs and vaguely sad

Garbage

Хороший альбом, прям ниче серьезного сказать не могу

this became background noise so quickly, never a good sign

Zero stars would be accurate. Woke up after 40 minutes, thought it was still the first track.

It's just so......beige.

64 minutes of tracks that sound like the hidden track at the end of an album. Kind of flabbergasted how this even made the list.

Just because you can technically sing falsetto doesn't mean you have a falsetto worth singing. Not bad, I just can't imagine being in the mood to listen to this

I think I audibly said “meh” at one point. Kinda sums it up for me.

I know the band and heard the singles, which you couldn't escape in the 90s, and now for the first time I've finally heard the album. It didn't really leave a lasting impression, if I'm honest. Heard before ❌️ Listened this time ✅️ Revisit ❌️ ★★★☆☆(6/10) Total reviewed : 437 Already owned : 98 Purchased : 21 To buy : 5 Nope : 313

Wasn't expecting much, to be honest, and was pleasantly surprised at the end. Good production, good songwriting, fun listen all around.

Always liked the Verve but most of these were new to me. All the layering, sound effects, made for a very cool listen.

God this is dull. Nothing stands out apart from Ashcroft moaning and droning.

Another britpop band I just missed for being too young. Apart from Bittersweet Symphony - that was everywhere. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meandering, meditative, mid. There's too much of a muchness going on here for me - it's a lot of sound, but it is all similar from track to track and flows into each other with minimal distinctive elements. I can't really pick out a track that stood out. Laminar flow - the album. 1*