Urban Hymns

suburban hymns more like it

I've always found The Verve to be SUPER forgettable, with Bitter Sweet Symphony being the only track that is remotely memorable (I can even hum it!). I was excited to dive into this album, the first time I've purposefully listened to The Verve for an extended period, and my first whole album experience. Sorry to report, but this has not changed the needle for me AT ALL. My opinion is completely unchanged. The Verve is like U2, if they were less annoying, but also way more generic. Every single track is at the same exact tempo, and has a complete lack of energy to it. Sorry to bother you, Verve. Didn't mean to interrupt whatever you were doing and have you record this album. The exception to this is the last track, "Come On!", which features heretofore undiscovered techniques for our boys, include changes in TEMPO, changes in VOLUME, and lyrics sung with EMOTION. This last track, and the fact that they *are* less annoying than U2, gives them an entire bonus extra star from me.

Starts with their biggest hit, and that's where it may as well end. Super generic, all the tracks are way too long considering the lack of diversity on the album, honestly super shocked this album is even on this list. Probably the biggest example of the British influence on this list. Would honestly only give half a star for the hit if I could

It’s kind of amazing how every Britpop record ever made landed on the 1001 Albums list. I mean, what are the odds? This one’s ok. 76 minutes of Britpop is too long for me.

Like listening to paint dry. 4

This is right up my street. The opening track is quite possibly the best tune to ever kick off an album. Bittersweet Symphony gives you shivers that so many bands would only dream of passing to their fans. It then leads on to the brilliant Sonnet and The Rolling People, which is not quite on the same level but is a good tune in its own right; though, little does that matter once The Drugs Don’t Work flows into your ears. A beautiful ballad that brings a tear to ones eye. Catching The Butterfly is another somewhat atmospheric song that I really enjoyed, almost like a palette cleanser to Neo Wilderness which goes full acid trip for a little while before travelling through Space and Time. Weeping Willow is another wonderful experience embracing The Verve’s love of the ‘wah wah’. I almost forgot that Lucky Man was coming on this album due to the slightly druggy preceding tracks but it was a welcomed ballad to lift you up before the last portion of the album. The last few songs on this album wind down the feel and you can tell it’s coming to a close, what you can’t tell (if you bought the album when it was released) was the onslaught was heading towards you as a hidden track. Come on is a powerful ending to a fantastic album and if you end right to the end there is an extra piece of psychedelia for you. It sounds like you are supposed to play it in reverse and listen out for some satanic messages; but this isn’t the white album, so let’s not. Overall I loved it, thought about being a little more conservative considering it’s competition in this 1001 albums list but screw it, it’s getting a 5.

Zombie rock drivel from Glastolad lug nuts. Good for a pre-football match chant and a good racist head kicking (probably). Whatever era they think they're reviving doesn't exist except in the Sunday Mirror. I hate this.

Best Song: Bittersweet Symphony. Even though the song is overplayed, it felt like the only song on the album that woke up and came to play. Worst Song: Catching the Butterfly. Slow, meandering, with a kind of nasal drone. Overall: Not entirely sure what there is to like about this album. The massiveness of Bittersweet Symphony overshadows the rest of the album, which comes off as sleepy and uninteresting. It doesn't even have the decency to be short.

Incredible how this was such a big album back in the day. Take the worst aspects of Oasis, mash with the uninteresting bits of World of Twist, lard it all with draggy tempos and voila, you have Urban Hymns. Imagine, if you will, a damp late autumn day in the UK. Outside the sky is slate grey, and greasy rivulets of rainwater slide down the windowpane. In front of you is a half-burned, half-pink sausage swimming in beans and soggy mushrooms. This is a tolerable life you have found for yourself. Urban Hymns by the Verve is playing on the stereo.

so slow and mawkish. crawls along like a wounded animal with a broken leg, except a wounded animal probably wouldn't whine as much. honestly don't understand why this albums gets bummed as much as it does. what is it for? are you supposed to be moved by the beat? cry about the sad subjects? whine along? does it make you feel cool? do you marvel in the musicianship? is it for slitting your wrists? what is it for? musically this should be good, with the wall of sound thing with mountains of reverb and guitar noises but barring about 5 minutes this album bored the slimy green shit out of me, its just pseudo cool depressing bollocks. the worst bit about verve is it feels like lets have a look at what you could have won - the track this is music off the previous album is superb and if they could have gone down that road they would have written a brilliant album, but instead they went down the lowest common denominator depressing emo sell records to the masses road instead. so instead of being legendary the verve sit in the same boat as starsailor and embrace, in fact i put starsailor on after this to see if that was a fair comparison and i enjoyed starsailor more than this.

Sounds like drinking beers in the sun, smoking marlborough lights, cracking on with girls and feeling invincible... All the best bits of being in your late teens in the 90s. Rose tinted, yes, but the best memories are. It's not an unbiased rating, of course. But still.

Just have a look at those singles; Bitter Sweet Symphony, Lucky Man, The Drugs Don't Work, Sonnet.

Excellent album, some classic 90's indie rock. Stand out tracks are the singles but the album tracks are strong also, good riffs and vocals throughout.

I (like everyone else) remember bittersweet symphony, it was everywhere in the 90s. The Drugs Don't Work was also in the charts in Australia, although I'd forgotten that (and didn't even know who sang it) until it just played. I'd thought it was some alterna-wuss Aussie band like Powderfinger or The Whitlams. And those songs are *just ok*; the rest of the album really isn't very good. It just plods along while you wonder if it'll ever end. I really like Oasis, but even though this sounds kinda similar it really didn't do anything for me. It was like decaf coffee or non-alcoholic beer: it almost tastes the same but without the kick, why would you bother? I'd rather have a glass of water. But whatever - if this album was half an hour (and not SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES) I'd have probably given it a 3. But it had no business being boring for that long, so it gets a 2/5.

Please stop making me listen to this awful drivel

This album is probably in my top 10 of all time, let alone top 1001. In 1997 I had just entered my teenage years, full of angst and dealing with a bereavement. The summer holidays were spent with a heavy emphasis on watching music TV and you couldn't go more than about 30 mins without The Box (channel 17) VH1 (23) or MTV (30) playing Bittersweet Symphony. A family friend bought me Urban Hymns on CD and wow, it was so much more than BSS. Full of feeling and resonating as much with my teenage psyche as it does now I played all 74 min of it over and over. The culmination of the album with the 'big fuck you' in Come On also features one of my favourite lyrics - I must be feeling low / I talked to god in a phonebox on my way home / I told you my answer / I left you my dreams on your answering machine

LOOKING AT THE HEAVENS WITH A TEAR IN MY EYE 🥲

The Verve have officially graduated into "Mild and Forgettable", a step up from their previous class of "Boring to the Point of Physical Pain."

This was a fantastic album. It was strange hearing Bittersweet Symphony in context after hearing it in isolation so many times, and it is still definitely the highlight track, but there are plenty of songs on here that are overshadowed by it. I hadn't heard all of the singles before - they're all very strong. I don't think this album has aged much whatsoever since it's release.

Very interesting Album! A few hits which are nothing to be disliked (especially with its recording quality). The Melodic lines happening on the background (Example "One Day") play really well with the harmonization of the songs. Creates very cool build ups ! "The rolling people" is a really good song, my favourite! Reminds me of Pearl Jam without sounding like a copy. Overall I Think it should be 5 stars! Personally not what I will be listening a lot but worth 5 stars.

Sounds very nice

Always amazing

A guy with a shitty Gallagher haircut and skinny legs somewhere in the midlands tries to introduce me to 'good' music then slaps my ass. His repressed emotions only come out at the pub, punches flying.

I kind of get the verve thing. They’ve definitely got that j’ne sais quoi, just, ce n’est pas pour moi.

A quick scan of the reviews I have written so far in this project reveal that I have used the adjective "verve" to describe at least five different albums to date. Ironically, Urban Hymns by The Verve will not be one of them. I never really liked Britpop much; too Anglocentric, too concerned with its own image, a seeming contempt for its own audience, a tendency towards arrogance and aggression and sexist laddishness bordering on outright misogyny. Many commentators have described this album as the swansong for Britpop, and it comes across like that to me; the party's over and this is the hangover album. It is, admittedly, more introspective and downbeat than Oasis (say), but that's because all the cocaine is now gone and we're left to deal with the shitty repercussions. Mad Dick Ashcroft was right on the money: the drugs do not, in fact, work. Emily Tartanella astutely wrote in the Magnet (https://magnetmagazine.com/2009/08/18/the-overunder-britpop/): "The Verve has one—count it, one—great song, and that is 'Bittersweet Symphony.' Not only that, but 'Bittersweet Symphony' was immeasurably improved by a Jay-Z remix. The most impressive aspect of the Verve is how Richard Ashcroft has successfully tricked the world into thinking of him as a deep, insightful writer, despite penning lyrics as inane as “Are you invited/To the party of life?/Now you’ve decided/Do you live ’til you die?” The answer to that question is, by the way, yes. Despite having more high-profile break-ups than Jennifer Aniston, the Verve has endured both commercially and critically. While 1995 sophomore album A Northern Soul had its moments, 1997’s Urban Hymns (the band’s biggest success) is one of the most bloated, boring and overpraised albums of the ’90s." Preach, Emily, preach! As proof of how over-rated they are, here is a list of musical influences that Urban Hymns 'recalls', according to wikipedia: Oasis, Stone Roses, Suede, Ennio Morricone, old Motown singles, Richard Thompson, Britpop, indie rock, orchestral rock, psychedelia, post-Britpop (whatever _that_ is meant to be), Big Star, Van Morrison, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones, Amon Duul II, Spacemen 3, U2, Radiohead, boom bap, trip hop, angelic choirs, Aphrodite's Child, Funkadelic, Led Zeppelin, the Stones (again), Kurt Cobain, John Lennon (solo), the Beatles, Cocteau Twins, Happy Mondays, Jeff Buckley, Neil Young ("playing in hell"), Bob Dylan, Derek and the Dominos, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, John Squire, Lee Hazlewood, Echo and the Bunnymen, Neil Diamond, Led Zep (again), MC5, the Stooges, "churchworthy gospel", and, unsurprisingly, Blur. Well, if you mix all of that up in a bucket (and don't skimp on the reverb), you get a pretentious mess of boring midtempo codswallop just like this album. Of course, if you spend two million quid recording an album, it's going to sound pretty schmick. But every song on the record needs a couple of minutes trimmed off to reduce the bloat that plagues this album. Most albums should be less than 40-45 minutes in length, and that goes double for Urban Hymns. Most of the decent songs are front-loaded on the album, which makes the back half drag endlessly with meandering, over-long and unfocused filler tracks, all plastered over with slathers of reverb to bring some kind of cohesiveness to a patchwork of samples, wonky guitars, and different production approaches. The spaciousness and slightly depressive lyrics don't hide that Urban Hymns suffers from all the sins of Britpop; bloat, arrogance, infighting, laddishness, public drama, and bucket hats. The proof is all in the final lines of the last song: "Fuck you... we're breaking up".

That one song was good tho

Putting Bittersweet Symphony at the very start of this album was a mistake. They blew their load way too soon, and the only other fine track is The Drugs Don’t Work which is also not far behind Symphony on side A. It truly goes on way too long for what it is. I feel like every track could be used as credits music for early 2000’s romance movies, and I wouldn’t be able to differentiate half of them from each other, much like early 2000’s romance movies. Not atrocious, but astoundingly milquetoast.

This album was a mainstay during my original iPod (technically 3rd Gen, blue screen, black text unit) in the late 2000s. Haven’t heard it all the way through since then. I read some of the other reviews before listening again and was surprised so many people were rating it pretty low. Came to the realization that Urban Hymns falls in the same category that I’ve read a bunch of different albums on this list as far as well too. Mostly songs go on way way way too long. I think it’s definitely I was grooving to it during that time because I would be listening with nothing else really going on. Maybe riding the bus home or something. Bittersweet Symphony is obviously the centrepiece and main draw on this one. The lyrics, although pretty simple, are just purely elemental at this point. I need to hear some sounds that recognize the pain in me. I remember in the late 2000s when the Verge reunited and people were in awe of how good Bittersweet Symphony sounded after it, not really being in his eye guys for the past 10 years. I’ve always thought that that is the songs legacy, when you hear it for the first time in a while you’re bowled over by how big it is. I think the only song that’s come close in the past 25 years is The Mother We Share by Chvrches. Equally of a time and already nostalgia triggering. Otherwise, Lucky Man is a song made for walking around during golden hour. And the drugs don’t work is an incredibly depressing song that still works. The Verve are definitely a band You have to listen to more passively, in the background to truly vibe with I don’t know if this is a truly great album, but I am going to give it five stars. It’s firmly in the canon of my musical upbringing.

I love 90s alternative and indie, but I have gone through life without too much knowledge on The Verve's discography, so I was excited to check this out. (Almost) everyone knows Bitter Sweet Symphony, and what a great album opener it is! It really sets the stage for the album and is a good representative of the rest of the album's similar quality offerings. The symphonic motif from Bitter Sweet Symphony cascades throughout all of the songs, calling back to it. The word "symphonic" reminds me of hymns, so I can't help but wonder if there's something at play here with their album title? There is a dreamy, psychedelic sound that is woven throughout this album, making it really easy to listen to. With the exception of one track, these songs are all at least 4 minutes long, many in the 5-7 minute range. There's an air of passion in this album where these guys seem to just be jamming and feeling the music with no regard for track length. For me, all of the above points help craft this album into a cohesive experience from start to finish, making this album's whole greater than the sum of its parts. Everything except Bitter Suite Symphony was new to me; my standouts on this album were Sonnet, Space and Time, Weeping Willow, Lucky Man, and Velvet Morning.

What a guy! What a band! What a hero! Ooooh what a day!!!

A great album that braves uneven rhythm at times. Many sing alongs to boot. I don’t know if ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ refers to party drugs or antidepressants, and I won’t find out

BITTER SWEET SYMPATHY, THAT'S LIFEEEE!

Großes Album! Klassiker! Setzte 1997 den endgültigen Schlusspunkt der Britpop-Welle, aber was für einen! Nur Hits! Neben den bekannten Singles ist übrigens „The Rolling People“ mein Favourit auf dem Album!

Excellent

Bittersweet Symphony is pretty much a masterpiece of a song. The rest of the album also had a lot more depth than I expected and I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Just good music, good songwriting, sufficient variety and finally just a very good album!

10/10 album

Love this album

First year. Robert Gordon university. Garth see flats. On repeat.

Excellent

bittersweet symphony always. the rest - unimpressed

This is what they'd play at the euthanasia clinic if they used music to terminate you

Spun through this once and had no interest to do a second listen. I remember thinking, "Oh, I know that song," but it didn't lead to anything that I'd want to know better. I could see this being of use as background music in a bar where nobody wants to listen.

I’m at a 3.5, and I wish I could leave it there, but I think I’m going to barely bump this up to a 4, even with some hesitations in doing so. I mean, I’ve been sitting here for about 68 minutes of total music, and I just sort of feel… strange. This is not a bad album at all; it’s incredibly technically sound, and in terms of the actual soundscape, production, melodies, and appeal, what’s here is a marked improvement over the sort of dreadfully bland “A Northern Soul” from 290 albums ago. As a whole, I really did enjoy most of the tracks here. Bitter Sweet Symphony is still pretty damn good, and most of the other 12 tracks are enjoyable. However, this album falls into the same trap and pit that “A Northern Soul” did – it takes a while for it to fall into that pit, but it gets there. I wasn’t able to put this into words 290 albums ago, but I’ve figured out what it is now: this album treats every single track like it’s the closing track of the album, and it creates a homogenous sort of effect where all the luster of the orchestral arrangements, and the big epic swirling soundscapes sort of become… mundane. It doesn’t ruin the album experience as much as it did on “A Northern Soul”, mainly because they managed to figure out how to make most of the tracks compelling while sustaining me as a listener for the most part… but it does really start to creep in the longer the album goes on. This could easily be avoided if they just threw in some “lesser” tracks, but… I dunno, hearing what ELO did on “Out of The Blue”, which does a pretty similar thing with giving every track a level of bombastic importance, but to a much more successful degree, makes this album feel like it sort of failed in comparison. Don’t get me wrong, what’s here still sounds great across the board, and I’m sure most of, if not all of these tracks will likely feel better individually, separated from the 68 minutes that turn the album experience into a bit of a slog. The strength of that individuality is, oddly enough, what’s giving me the leeway to bump this up from a 3.5 to a 4, if only because I feel like this deserves higher than a 3. I vibed so much more with the tone and soundscapes and the general energy of this album compared to “A Northern Soul”, and I fully acknowledge that most of these tracks, if they pop up on shuffle, are gonna feel fucking great to listen to. As an entire album experience, front to back, it starts strong, and then really settles into a flatline around the middle, with occasional little peaks back upward, but… man, when it settles, it settles in a weird way that doesn’t feel as engaging as it could have or should have. This is full of individually good to great tracks that simply don’t mesh super well as an album – when you’re deep in the trenches, it just feels too similar to really feel good as an album. They just sound so damn good though. I feel OK with bumping this up to a 4 – I could easily regret it in the future, but it feels correct right now.

For my father's generation the big question was: Do you listen to the Beatles, The Rolling Stones or Hendrix? There was so much meaning folded into that question, and even more in its answer. I remember when the brit-pop wave hit Europe back in the 90's. It was as if the question was repeated. This time with Blur and Oasis as the only right answers. Bands like Kula Shaker, Suede and Pulp somehow existed within the boundaries of that same question. At the time I was still listening to Nirvana and I just discovered Green Day, so I was kind of in another place, but I quickly learned to enjoy the British invasion, especially Blur. But in 1997 the impossible happened. Urban Hymns hit the shelves. And suddenly a single band united the striding sides in the Oasis-vs-Blur-battle. In 1997 everyone agreed: The coolest band in the world was The Verve. There so much melodic melancholy on this album. Top tracks: Bitter Sweet Symphony, Sonnet, The Drugs Don’t Work, Catching The Butterfly and Lucky Man.

I’m really glad this project got me to revisit this album and subsequently the bands four album catalog as well as Richard Ashcrofts solo work. I’ve heard the two well known singles “Bittersweet Symphony” and “Lucky Man” from Urban Hymns to great extent thanks to them being overplayed on radio back when radio was a thing people actively listened to, as well as on MTV. I know I’ve given this entire album a listen before I just don’t remember any of the songs or even if I liked it. So coming at it with a fresh musical perspective, I gotta say, it really hit me. I love Richard Ashcroft’s voice and songwriting, I hear hints of Scott Walker mixed with Bono and Liam Gallagher in his voice on a few songs. The entire band also sounds incredible on this album, their sound is somewhere between The Stone Roses, Spiritualized and Oasis. Really the only song I’d skip on future listens is “Bittersweet Symphony” and that’s just due to fatigue from it being overplayed. Over the weekend I’ve enjoyed listening to The Verve’s other three albums almost as much as Urban Hymns, I only wish I gave this band more of a chance before now.

A bit disappointed from the negative reviews of this album. For me it was smooth listening. Remember listening to "The drugs don't work" thinking about my aunt. R.I.P. 🙏🏻 4/5

Greatly enjoyed. I'd heard singles, but never the whole album. Never realized quite how energetically dreary the band is.

Auðvitað bara geggjuð ...

In 1997 this was one of my favourite albums so had it down as a 5 star album. I listened to it twice and still like the music, but also got a little annoyed by the lyrics and the way of singing. I would now go for an older Verve album. 1997: 9/10 2024: 8/10

High quality songs delivered with a lot of (sometimes a bit too much) passion.

It seems to me that non-Brits always have an odd concept of what Britpop sounded like. American’s especially seem to associate it almost exclusively with acoustic ballads a la Wonderwall. And while I do get how that image has come about, it’s pretty far from the truth of what was happening with Britpop. It was a diverse genre, stretching through the early 70’s-ish hard rock of Oasis, the late 60’s-ish power pop of Blur, the spiky glam of Suede, the class politics fuelled New Wave of Pulp, and numerous others. Any sound you liked from the previous three decades of pop music, you could find a good Britpop approximation. Where the Verve come in is providing the Psychedelic part of the Britpop movement. Coming from a shoegaze background and eventually adding more keyboards, strings and acoustic elements as their sound evolved, by 97, when Urban Hymns was released they had already broken up and reformed a couple of times. I’ve always thought this tension really came through in the music. It’s big and orchestral, and more than often light and airy, but there’s always a brooding melodrama just behind the surface. It’s one of my favourite Britpop albums, and a lot of the songs are a close contender for some of my favourite songs of all time, but I do bow to some of the more critical voices this time. It is 75 minutes, no album needs to be that long. But, for a lot of those 75 minutes, Urban Hymns is perfection

I'm surprised at how much I ended up enjoying this. I think it just scrapes a 4 from me, as I love the sound they have. Some of the jams in the earlier part of the album, on some relatively long songs, were really fun. It does commit the cardinal sin of being far too long though, there's no reason for an album like this to be over 70 minutes long. If it was a tight 9 songs, ~50 minutes, we'd have a real gem on our hands, but when you've got your sound nailed down like this, it gets tiring by the last few songs. Well worth a listen regardless though.

An exceptional surprise in every way I went into this very unaware of this group The first track "Bittersweet Symphony" is a song that I instantly knew, but I never knew it was by this group. It is an incredible track and it continues to be a big hit today. That was the only song I knew off of this album. Every other track was the first time I heard it. Rolling People, Space and Time, and Lucky Man were my 3 favorites off this one. Overall, an incredible album that I will definitely be revisiting.

Massivly accomplished album that arise during the Britpop era. Super smoothe production and ace songs with Ashcrofts resonating voice. It perhaps became a bit ubiquitous at the time but its a good album of pop rock.

I've seen a side to The Verve i've never heard before. My favourite discovery here is "The Rolling People". There is a nice mix of different sounds here, though I found the pacing of this album a bit off, constantly switching between slightly upbeat and then down again, which is why this isn't a 5/5 (a Coop 2/5). Not a good review due to only listening while cooking lol

A mixed bag for me. Some obvious high-points but drags towards the end and therefore doesn’t quite live up to its iconic status. Some undeniable tunes still.

Decent, but it got overly monotonous after a while. All the songs started to blend together in one long forgettable musical arrangement.

this started off hot with Bittersweet Symphony, which i unironically love and think absolutely deserves the hype. unfortunately, it was all downhill from there into Diet U2. i was mostly enjoying the first half of the album, but once i crossed into the second half and still had 45 minutes left, i started to lose patience. most of these songs are twice as long as they need to be and nowhere near interesting enough to justify that length. it wasn't actively offensive, i was just bored.

not awful, but all the songs were super long and just sounded like generic britpop. the massive single, bittersweet symphony, absolutely carried this album as far as it could, but even it couldn't save us from another hour and change of the most incredibly average british music. the other singles were fine i guess. the hidden track was super lame and not worth the annoyance of even skipping through the extended silence before it. i kinda liked the energy of the rolling people, but realized it felt more like a 7-minute supergrass song and that's probably why it was somewhat enjoyable. favorites: bitter sweet symphony, the rolling people, the drugs don't work, lucky man

Another band from Manchester!? There were some other interesting bands in the same era that offer more variety... Dave Matthews Band, The Cranberries, Garbage. Nothing really wrong with the Verve exactly, and I like them more than Oasis, but I'm griping about yet another band that sounds like other bands that we've listened to on this list.

Velvet Morning was good but I am so incredibly sick of British alt rock. Gun to my head I could not tell the difference between this and Oasis.

Album cover = "Hey everyone! Look to your right! **takes picture** No, dude your OTHER right! Sheesh. . . . whatever. Print!" I only know the opener, which is great. Can it get better from here?? If "Sonnet" is any indication, then yes. This brings me back to that late 70's "Laughter in the Rain" soft rock, a genre wholly missing in music today (for the future aliens reading our reviews, that's 2024 BCE). "It's country or it's metal!!" Bad edit at 2:05 is jarring, throws off the mood. Otherwise this song would perfectly reach what it's going for. . . . Rock n' Roll can be all about attitude and delivery over good writing; style over substance. Luckily, "The Rolling People" is well written and avoids the standard trappings of the genre where the guitars are tastefully distorted and not trying to overcompensate and show how tough they can be, dude. The post-Jane's Addiction extended jam at the end doesn't seem overindulgent as much as just letting the moment ride. This song seems like it was well-tested live as the closer before being committed to tape. Bop-Bop Bana, Bop-Bop Banana-nana. These guys can really write a slow song; we find another perfection in the slow melody of "The Drugs Don't Work" where the production does a great job of re-interpreting what is essentially a country song. And what a great line: "like a cat in bag waiting to drown, I'm coming down." This is the first time I've heard this album. I'm not going to review this track-by-track, but by now I see where this is heading. Atmospheric, catchy, lush, and spacious, Urban Hymns is a great vibe, equally content as background ambiance as it is turned up and blasting, center-stage. The orchestration throughout the album adds majesty without overshadowing the fact that this is still guitar rock. Always on the verge of going into psychedelia, they remain grounded in their pop-rock formula, save for "Neon Wilderness" which goes a bit further out but stays too safe for optimal peaking. Yes, I'm a little late to The Verve party, but I contend that they're a little late to the 90's party. This album arrived when grunge and post-grunge were all but dead, and rap was reeling in a much-overdue golden age of creativity, and rightfully dominating the airwaves. Had this been released around 1994-1995 to help pick up the pieces when grunge started dissolving, The Verve may have been a heavyweight alongside Radiohead to push new boundaries of rock into the next decade. Each band member and the producer are doing exactly what they should to best serve these songs. Having heard nothing else by The Verve, I'm curious if they ever expanded their form from this triumphant jumpstart or if they stayed content constrained within their own walls. This album suggests that they have the skills to do something truly original and great, but as it is Urban Hymns remains a touch too safe and predictable.

Daydreaming under cold, grey skies. This album owes a lot to later Beatles and other acts of that milieu. Lush production, good use of sampling on the absolutely inescapable single, “Bittersweet Symphony.” Acoustic guitar strumming at the center, embellished with textures of soul, psychedelia, trip hop, and even old-school country & western at moments. Heavily layered yet somehow subdued. All sharp edges have been smoothed. Very consistent feel throughout the album, but by the end, I was craving a change of pace. Surprised this is in the top 20 top-selling albums of all time in UK – illustrates some of the deep differences in taste between the UK and the US. Perhaps this entry also helps to reveal the alleged bias this list has toward British acts and Britpop. I didn't find this album bad, but for whatever reason, I personally found it hard to truly connect to.

Of their time, for sure, but there are some excellent songs here, albeit with their influences front and centre. And I also think the band had a tendency to veer off into the self-indulgent. A star for each of the stand-out tracks.

I had a copy of this album when it first came out. Like so many others, I discovered The Verve due to 'Bittersweet Symphony'. It is undeniably a great song. The rest of the album was always just background music for me. Pleasant enough to listen to but nothing memorable. Revisiting this album many years later, it's much the same as I remembered it. The music is good enough but nothing really stands out. It's still great background music with one stand out single. But generally I just don't understand the excitement around this band.

Drone-y but not actively annoying. Nothing memorable except Bittersweet Symphony.

Bitterwet Symphony overshadows the rest of the album

A mixture of epic bangers and boring dross. Over rated, underwhelming 3.3

Liked Bittersweet Symphony, Drugs Don't Work and Lucky Man, but overall the album is a little bland for my tastes.

I actually expected this album to be better. But the most well-known songs are awesome.

'And I'm a million different people from one day to the next.' Ashcroft has a bit too much of the Bono affect, - melodramatic, laying into something that doesn't exist - the songs are too long, and the music is often prosaic. 'The Rolling People' boringly channels Oasis. Listen: 'And here we ARE the rolling people' directly lifts Liam Gallagher's characteristic cadence. 'The Drugs Don't Work' is properly earnest but poorly written: 'The drugs don't work they just make you worse.' Obvious much? The best song here is the short 'Neon Wilderness,' but even that can't save the record from being a dispiriting drag. Dreariness is a necessary theme of our best art, but it's not a productive quality. 'We have existence and it's all we share.' Yecch.

Pre-listening: This album prompts an interesting question: what do you think is the single song you have heard the most in your life without ever hearing another track from its album? Because I think this one would be in the running for me (at least until today.) Listening: I would probably like Bittersweet Symphony more if it weren't played repeatedly at UT football games. It's obviously a catchy tune though. And I am reading the lyrics while listening and laughing that despite nearly 30 years of repeated listening I had NO IDEA some of these verses/words were in this song. Now for the rest of the album: This second song almost sounds like Tom Petty. Third song: sounds like Oasis. Losing interest... This fourth song sounds like something somebody would sing at a Scott Weiland tribute concert. Meh... OK, I'm starting to understand why I never heard another track off this album. I ABSOLUTELY did not need to hear this before I die.

I like older Verve OK, but this just seemed over indulgent and pretty cheesy. Not for me.

Snooze

Bitter Sweet Symphony was beat to death on the radio, so I almost turned it off as soon as it started playing. I wished I had. The rest of the songs ran together and sounded the same. The only song worth listening to was Rolling People. It reminded me of early U2.

Spacey Oasis. I’ve not listened to this album before. The hits are the sound of sitting in a pub in the 90s. The rest was both more psychedelic and more boring than I was expecting. And as it went it got more and more boring. Boooooring. 2 stars.

It's one of those albums that was only added in the books because of one major hit song.. Ironically, it reminds me of the suburbs. Favorite Track: "Bitter Sweet Symphony".

2 okay songs do not make up for this 1-hit wonder.

I can't do it. I can't do another late 90s britpop album. How are there so many on this list?

I remember a stopover in Scotland on our way to (I think) Denmark years ago. We walked around for a few hours in Edinburgh to be exact. The weather was a constant overcast with clouds and light rain falling every few minutes. The sun was struggling to come out. The sky looked so bland. That is what this album sounds like to me. Bland....bleh. I don't think I had ever actively listened to Bitter Sweet Symphony the whole way through despite ridiculous amounts of playtime in the U.S. because the song just did not really pull me in. I feel the same way about the whole album. None of it really pulls me in despite was seems like an attempt to have a bit of a late Beatles sound. I tried to think back to some of what I was listening to back in 1997, that was out at the same time. What was in rotation for me was Deftones..Around the Fur, Incubus S.C.I.E.N.C.E and Tool had just released Aenima the year before in 1996 I think. That year I also went to see U2 on the Popmart tour. Maybe that's why seemingly mopey Brit Rock just didn't do it for me. This band has a lot of similarity to me to Oasis which was another band that didn't really draw me in. It's not that they are bad at playing, I just didn't hear enough dynamics and creativity in the music. From back then what I remember about the Verve was that they had a similar name to the band the Verve Pipe, and Keith Richards was trying to sue them. Again, not a terrible sound, just not my thing. Blur is an example to me of an interesting Brit Rock band. I am not sure why this album would be on a need to listen list and it's mind blowing that this is a UK top seller.

Bittersweet Symphony brings me right back to elementary school but I have not heard a single other song of theirs. "Sonnet" is actually awesome. "Drugs Don't Work" is nice. Neon onwards its all duds. I think that without having a real emotional or nostalgic connection to this album, it's just ends up sounding like pretty generic alt/pop-rock.

One hit wonders to me.

ugggggGH. I don’t have the patience for this! This list is making me hate Britpop.

Not my favorite. I was familiar with the opening track but none of the others. Overall this album sounded generic and dragged on far too long. It’s not my favorite genre and this example of it I particularly disliked. I will not return this one.

what do you think the odds are that Robert Dimery was a teenager/young adult during the new wave and britpop eras?

I had to start on track 2, because I couldn't listen to track 1 another time in my life. I think I heard it every 5 minutes on the radio back in the day. These guys are good enough musicians to make the type of music on this album, which is to say uninspiring, basic shit. The fellas play their instruments well, but the singer's voice makes me want to stop listening. This has been done before by better bands. It's like a watered down U2, or Oasis, who were a watered down Beatles. The production is okay, but I'm annoyed sitting through this one. These guys got paid, so mission accomplished, I guess. I was hoping that Velvet Morning would be a cover of Some Velvet Morning by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood, but I was let down one more time. It was just another song. If I were forced to pick a favorite, I would give a nod to Neon Wilderness, probably because it doesn't sound like the rest of the songs.

This thing is so insanely boring. Its like U2 if they never tried to do anything exciting. The opener is decent enough, and the closer FINALLY brings some energy, but the rest feels like I’m being dragged underwater by someone moaning tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiime every couple of seconds. There’s nothing interesting about this, and the only time I think I’ll ever think about this album is when Bittersweet Symphony plays for the one billionth time and I go “Oh! I know that one, it’s from that album I hated, who was it by again? Oh never mind, who cares.” I can’t overstate how great it felt to get to the end of this and have another song not by these guys come up.

I think it's really telling that the most popular song from this album, 'Bittersweet Symphony' is based off a repeated 4 bar loop from a 1965 Rolling Stones song. I don't understand the appeal of this kind of alternative brit-pop. The album makes no statements, takes no risk, and is unmistakably bland and boring. I actually had to do some research to find out what makes this album so respected, and I still didn't get a solid answer. I don't understand who the target audience is, who searches for music where you can't tell one four-chord progression pop song from another in the same album? I felt like I could fall asleep halfway through, wake up, and not even realize I'm five more songs into the album.

Bardzo spoko chillout album

Urban Hymns is a sweeping, emotionally heavy album that wears its heart firmly on its sleeve. While it’s best known for the massive hit Bitter Sweet Symphony and fair enough, it’s a great track. The rest of the album digs deeper into late-night melancholy and psychedelic-tinged introspection. Tracks like The Drugs Don’t Work and Sonnet show Richard Ashcroft at his most vulnerable, while Catching the Butterfly and Weeping Willow expand the soundscape with moody textures and layered instrumentation. It's an ambitious album that straddles the line between Britpop and something more spiritual, even cosmic. There are moments where it meanders a bit, and it could’ve done with a slight trim, but the highs are undeniable and often deeply moving. It’s both a product of its era and something timeless, achingly sincere, beautifully produced, and easy to get lost in. A high watermark for late-'90s British rock.

This album has cropped up for me just after (4 albums in fact) I was served "(What's The Story) Morning Glory", which is quite bizzare as I've always considered them as very similar musically. It's a great album, there are 5 absolute standout tracks for me, and the rest are all very good - not one weak track on the album. It's a very easy 5 stars!!

Es ist ein Meisterwerk britischer Rockmusik. Mit Songs wie *Bitter Sweet Symphony* und *The Drugs Don't Work* verbindet das Album emotionale Tiefe mit epischer Soundlandschaft und zeitloser Melancholie. Die atmosphärische Produktion, kombiniert mit kraftvollem Gesang, macht jeden Track zu einem Erlebnis. Von gefühlvollen Balladen bis hin zu hymnischen Gitarrenriffs – Das Album fängt die Essenz der späten 90er perfekt ein und bleibt auch heute noch faszinierend. Ein Album, das Generationen überdauert. 😊👍

This album grew on me so immensely hard that I really want to give it a 5. It didn’t hook me until around the 3rd listen, but when it finally resonated with me I absolutely loved it. It turns out these guys are good friends with the guys from Oasis. Go figure. They sound like them so much, and I mean that as a massive compliment. “Bitter Sweet Symphony” is an absolute classic which I had never even heard before listening to this album for the first time. What really surprised me though is “The Rolling People”. I honestly wish the rest of the album was like that, but it’s not even a problem when the rest of the album is still so good anyway. My only nitpick is that there’s a multi minute long dead air during the final song that makes listening on repeat rather annoying, and I didn’t particularly like the song “The Drugs Don’t Work”. I don’t think that’s enough to dock it an entire star though. Yeah. Sure, it’s another 5 star.

I mean classic album. Bitter Sweet Symphony and The Drugs Don't Work.

Really pleasant Britpop.

Really good

British classic. Moody, questioning, psychedelic (less so than their previous two albums) and melodic. Massive singles surrounded by a set of songs with a cohesive mood and feel. Brilliant.

good uk rock

Mindes dem som ett one hit wonder med Bittersweet Symphony. Men halva plattan är ju så bra eller bättre! Riktigt schysst 90-tal. Femma!

Loved. I always enjoyed bittersweet symphony, but had not given the rest of the album the listening it deserved. Lucky man is a jam.