I am having having difficultly thinking of posts to write so I was surprised that I have never written anything about The Verve’s second and best album in the 13 years I have been blogging. This album is easily in my top five of all-time it has everything. Regular readers will know that my top albums are from a meaningful, happy or poignant moments of my past, rather than tediously saying I really like this album because it has a really good chord progression in the third verse.
It has often been thought that this album is a replication of taking drugs with the initial euphoria and then leading to the final come down. Looking through other review of the album it seems that The Verve wanted to have an album which encapsulated every major emotion. It was recorded in a remote Welsh studio and started with a two week ecstasy fuelled party and ended up a paranoia ladled wig out. Amazingly this is a powerful and cohesive piece of work that I feel makes A Storm in Heaven seem a little weak.
It opens with A New Decade and This is Music which are probably the most euphoric openers in any album Nick McCabe’s guitar sounds colossal and Richard Ashcroft vocals are possessed and raw. The song A Northern Soul was written about Noel Gallagher after he wandered off in a US tour (citation needed), ” this is a tale of a Northern Soul. Looking to find his way back home.”
The intensity lessens but the emotions rise in History, this is a stand out track from the album which deals with love and loss. Incidentally, hand claps on this track are courtesy of Liam Gallagher
The Verve believed that they had created a classic but as the album didn’t chart very well they split up before the release of the last single from the album. I think I read somewhere that it was at this time that just after the album was released and the band split up Ricard Ashcroft drove his car in circles on his front lawn until the wheels dropped off (citation needed).
The Verve : A Northern Soul
A New Decade
This Is Music
On Your Own
So It Goes
A Northern Soul
Brainstorm Interlude
Drive You Home
History
No Knock On My Door
Life’s An Ocean
Stormy Clouds
(Reprise)