Fan Review: Urban Hymns (2)

Well, it has finally arrived: here are my first thoughts on the first listen through...It came via a journalist friend of mine in New York who got the limited edition Hymnal packaging it is a black cardboard sleeve that has a silver band that ties the booklet together:

1. BITTER SWEET SYMPHONY - a slightly different mix (strings are intact) well we already know this one so I will move on.

2. SONNET - Hate to start on a down note but to my ears this is a bit over-produced, it is still beautiful...I do think however that Sonnet would sound a bit better if was stripped down to a more acoustic-type feel.

3. THE ROLLING PEOPLE - This is where the fun starts...killer version.....if you were worried that the soaring guitar of Nick was going to not be on this album you are dead wrong this is great and finishes with the first of many jams that stretch out the songs.

4. DRUG'S DON'T WORK - Single mix, great song.......good placement of the track.

5. CHASING THE BUTTERFLY - "In my dream I am Chasing the Butterfly" what a killer fucking lyric...this is a real gem...very dreamy song ala old school Verve....and this song goes into an extended jam as well at the end......

6. NEON WILDERNESS - Sort of a Monkey Magic meets Brainstorm with lyrics... A good song but very much an album track here.

7. SPACE AND TIME - acoustic intro into a clean solid mix of the song....it is better than the Sensation version with new lyrics at the end.

8. WEEPING WILLOW - Similar to Chasing the Butterfly has a down tempo feel to it, this album is very introspective and more serious than anything they have ever done, this song is evidence to this...

9. LUCKY MAN - A great song , killer lyrics....very personal, a mid tempo rocker with a stonesy influence throughout.

10. ONE DAY -Great organ intro- gentle guitar in the background- wow! this a totally new sound for Verve??? This is really interesting...love song.........

11. THIS TIME - another real change for Verve...this one is VERY commercial sounding but it works has a lot of samples and loops...these last two are going to be a little challenging for old school Verve fans to listen to at first....great song...weird tune!!!

12. VELVET MORNING - Another lilting love song , gorgeous tune..great vocals by Richard......probably my 2nd favorite.

13. COME ON - Time to wake up......fuck another blazing rocker ....insane jam at the end....

14. DEEP FREEZE - instrumental this right now is my favorite track on the album..very cool sounds throughout.....

Synopsis: 4 out of 4 stars........it is different...not quite the HUGE LP promised, but solid...this is album that will grow on you...........

• Source: Verve-Tribute: A tribute to what was website
• Review by Gavin

Fan Review: Earl's Court 1997

Earl's Court w/ Oasis
London, UK
September 27, 1997

Hello, everyone.

I am still on a real high. Just to let you know that I saw Verve at Saturday's Earl's Court Oasis gig and they were bloody excellent. I heard the strains of 'A New Decade' bellowing out of the hall as I was on my way in, I was getting severely pissed off as I had to show my ticket to stewards at almost every turn and thought I'd never get in on time - I wasn't as early as I'd liked to have been, but at least I did get there for the 1st song. They actually came on 10 minutes earlier than the 7.30 show time, but I'd already been warned of this from Thursday's show. I guess they wanted to play a longer set.

Well, they were amazing and were very well received by the crowd. 'Bittersweet Symphony' got a phenomenal reaction, but my highlight was 'History' - Fucking great!!

It was great to be able to actually sing to the new songs as well, before the album was out - They did 'Rolling People,' 'Sonnet' and 'Lucky Man' as well as 'ISSUE' and 'TDDW.' Oh, and of course COME ON!!!!

I was moving and a grooving all night long, loving every single minute of the whole event - to hear the sound of the BIG music in the cavernous hall was amazing, absobloodylutely amazing!!!!!

Oh, and Oasis were quite good too (only joking, they were awesome). Noel stated how lucky we all were to be able to see the 2 best bands around playing together and dedicated 'Magic Pie' to Richard - "This one's for Ashcroft".!!

Top one.

In short, The Best Gig I've ever been to, and I've been to quite a few. My voice is still not quite there and my hands are still aching from all of the applause. Come On you Rolling People!!!!

Cheers,
 Ady

Oh, forgot to say that this girl from Glasgow came up to us wanting to buy an E - I don't know why she thought we'd be able to oblige, and she wouldn't believe us when we said we didn't have any!! She was quite a laugh though - If you are out there - here's a big cheers!!!

• Source: Verve-Tribute: A tribute to what was website
• Review by Ady Foley

Gate - The Verve at Earl's Court

To the kids in the sold out Earls Court arena, he may as well be some sort of god. Pacing barefoot around the stage, lanky 6'-plus songsmith Richard Ashcroft is studiously tuning his guitar, making certain that every note rings true before proceeding. As he steps up to the microphone -- and a hush falls over the crowd -- cameras project real-time, big screen close-ups of his craggy, heavily shadowed face, one of the most photogenic in modern music (picture Lurch from the Addams Family after receiving some particularly good news). Then: magic. He begins to softly strum, begins -- in his dark, velvety voice -- to sing. "All this talk of getting old/ It's gettin' me down, my Lord/ Like a cat in a bag, waitin' to drown/ This time I'm comin' down. ..." You could hear a pin drop as Ashcroft, eyes shut, floats into the ballad's grim chorus: "Now the drugs don't work/ They just make you worse/ But I know I'll see your face again."

The fans sing along to current UK single "The Drugs Don't Work." And the message beams in loud and clear. Drone pop juggernaut the Verve -- which sailed into obscurity two years ago after a disastrous career ending concert in London -- had returned, crusading knight style, to reclaim its castle throne. Aided, of course, by an orchestral summer smash called "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and by old pals Oasis, who'd invited the reformed combo to open its three Earls Court dates -- not a bad way to announce to your comeback. Confirmation would arrive later that week, as "Urban Hymns" (the "Drugs" parent album) enters the English charts at No. 1 and refuses to budge. Even bratty Oasis mouthpiece Noel Gallagher took touching note of the event by stopping, mid-set, to tout the shows when "the two greatest fookin' bands in the world played the same stage together." And Gallagher (who'd also penned a song about Ashcroft, "Cast No Shadow") isn't known for befriending too many of his pop peers.

A couple of days later, Ashcroft -- all shaggy bangs, pouty lips, and big haunted eyes -- sits in a snack-strewn office at his label, Virgin Records, reminiscing about that historic gig. From the wings, he overheard the Noel kudo, he admits. "And I agreed wholeheartedly with him. Obviously, there are big differences between the Verve and Oasis as bands. But spiritually, I think we're comin' from the same place. We're trying to do similar things, but going down different roads to get there. And the point of us playing together at Earls Court was that three years ago, we played in front of 200 people, and we were both tellin' each other that one day we were gonna make it happen. So it was a celebration of that for us, the fact that we DID do it." Ashcroft scratches his angular chin for a second, pondering other possibilities. "Can you imagine if we HADN'T? Imagine that, three years down the line, we would've looked at each other and said 'Fuck, man -- we didn't make it happen'? But we DID. And for whatever madness went along the way to get to that point, we did it."

The Face - Dark Star

The Verve. It's taken 15 years, a split, a nervous breakdown, and a death, but now they're shining.

Spice Girls: is there is no getting away from them? Not in this life - not even if you're a rock star yourself, as The Verve are discovering this late July afternoon. In an airtight beige bunker beneath the Metropolis recording complex in sunny, suburban Chiswick, west London, disembodied and textless bits of Verve music leak through a studio blast door: The Verve are finishing the album they were supposed to have finished a year ago. Upstairs, meanwhile, in the car park of the neighbouring London Transport garage, a double decker bus painted with an all-over Union Jack is surrounded by cameramen, lighting technicians, brisk women clipping about with clipboards, and five very masculine looking transvestites who represent Britain's Hottest Pop Fivesome: Spice: The Movie is in lively production. It is sort of a walk-through pun on the us-and-them nature of the British music industry - Upstairs, Downstairs - and it's doing The Verve's heads in. The contrast between this and their own hermetic world could not be starker. As he returns from the toilet, The Verve's lanky and amiable bass player Simon Jones flashes an amused, well-what-are-you-going-to-do expression at the occupants of the studio's ante-room. Then he starts skinning up. 

Nowadays even the most paltry LP can flag itself as "long-awaited", but the one The Verve are finishing - their third - really is. Not so much because Verve patron Noel Gallagher proclaimed it's predecessor "A Northern Soul" as runner-up only to his own "Morning Glory" and Paul Weller's "Stanley Road" as the best album of 1995, and dedicated a song - "Cast No Shadow" - to The Verve's singer Richard Ashcroft. Nor because The Verve were actually supposed to have split up in August of that year, just as the gorgeous string-driven "History" was about to become their first big hit. 

No, the real reason is "Bitter Sweet Symphony" and everything that peculiar, direct, heart-filling song promised. Having emerged in the middle of the same 1992 indie boom that produced Suede, The Verve had gone on about the power of music to transform and renew your private world long before such things were fashionable. Their own music, though, always consisted of shapeless groove-based wig-outs, a Shamanistic psychedelia that was just too weird to play on the big stage. The Verve were dismissed as Northern nutters from a town (Wigan) with no rock'n'roll pedigree. Their singer - this character with extravagant, not-of-this-earth good looks and the build of a twig with metabolic problems - talked so much mysticism that he became known as "Mad" Richard. He was probably on drugs. It was said that The Verve would be dangerous if they ever wrote a song. Then they did.