Review:

on 2011-05-11 CharlesMartel Said:

I never really made it into Britpop. I don't mind Blur, Oasis initially seem better but they get wearing after a while, but a lot of the rest of it seems to be a bit of a rehash of music that has been done earlier. It's not that I dislike it, I just find it a bit too derivative. And when I come to the Verve I find myself torn with the same ambivalence.

The Verve get heavily criticised in some quarters for Richard Ashcroft's ego - the overly grand arrangements; the pompous moralising; the weird but great video with Ashcroft bumping into people as he walks down the street. I don't know who first compared Richard Ashcroft to Jim Morrison but he has an ego big enough to make me believe it was Richard Ashcroft. There are others who feel that the Verve were better as a shoegaze band but having heard their first album, supposedly the one to listen to, I tend to disagree.

That is enough of the criticism. I can see why it is levelled but don't necessarily agree with it. If I had to criticise, and it is a biggie, I would level the charge that this is an album with four or five good songs, and the rest is nothing more than filler. We all know the songs. "Bittersweet Symphony" has this lush orchestral arrangement and endlessly catchy melody which draws you in, ensnares you can holds you immobile as it washes over you with its pseudo-panegyric to the drudgery of modern life. "Lucky Man" is considerably more upbeat and is in stark contrast to many of the other tracks on the album. "The Drugs Don't Work" is a sombre number which gets criticised for its apparently pro-drug message, but is more about depression and mental illness (the same theme you will find in "Serious Drugs" by the Gigolo Aunts). And finally there is "Sonnet" which is full of melodrama and passion.

And that, as they say, is it. Take out these four tracks and you have an album which is really not worth giving any second thought to. Put them in, and you have a mediocre album enlivened by their addition. Put those four on an EP and ditch the rest and you have perhaps one of the best EPs of all time, and certainly the best of the nineties. The reality is that the album's reputation rests squarely on the shoulders of four tracks and the rest is forgettable.

But those four tracks, what tracks. "Bittersweet Symphony" which is the album's standout track, still has the same power and energy today as it did when it first came out, notwithstanding all the legal shit which went down when it was released. In essence, these four tracks represent some of the best music put out during the course of the nineties. In some ways they could almost be seen as the blueprint for the whole decade  this is how it should be: this is the soundtrack against which the decade was played over.

But albums are not made on four tracks and that is why this album does not get from me the same sort of accolades it gets from others. The rest of the album is a mish-mash of styles, influences and discordant musical directions. It does not hang together well and seems to be desperately searching for some coherent direction in which to go. This is a pity, because the Verve had the potential to have made a musical statement with this album which would have reverberated across the years. They did it with four tracks but could not sustain it for the rest. Accordingly, it gets a good enough rating, but not as good as it surely could have been.
Rating: 7/10