He may be better known for his anthems, his ego, and his excess, but Richard Ashcroft also tells a good story. And as the new career-spanning compilation This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 reveals, the history of his band, The Verve, is a good story as well. They began by playing sprawling, kaleidoscopic, heavens-scraping jams. These 60s-style improvisatory mindfucks were then edited down into the slightly less sprawling tracks that comprise the group's 1993 debut, A Storm in Heaven, an intoxicating amalgam of psychedelica and shoegaze.
Then Verve became The Verve (jazz 1, rock 0) and started to discipline their diaphanous noisescapes with traditional British songcraft. They released an ecstasy-laden promise of even better things to come, 1995's A Northern Soul. Ashcroft earned praise in song from the biggest band in Britain, Oasis. And then the band broke up.
But Ashcroft, the story's iconic hero as well as its raconteur, had prophesied that his band would secure a place in the rock'n'roll firmament. And lo, it was so: The band reformed, and 1997's decade-defining Urban Hymns almost made up for the then-recent demise of Britpop.
Sure, Ashcroft went on to release solo albums littered with self-indulgent drivel, and masterful guitarist Nick McCabe has been uncharacteristically quiet. Meanwhile, bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury's royalty checks sure aren't writing themselves! (Late addition Simon Tong? He found a gig as Blur's new Graham Coxon.) That just means it's time for the next phase of the story: The singles compilation, complete with "new" tracks. If The Verve's tale is Ashcroft's epic, This Is Music is his short-stories anthology.
Here's where the narrative starts to fall apart. The disc doesn't follow any recognizable order. So if newcomers want a quick taste of the early Verve's vast, submarine jamming, they'll have to skip to tracks five and eleven, respectively, to hear rare-ish singles "She's a Superstar" and "Gravity Grave." The conch-shaped guitar lines of first single "All in the Mind" announce the group's arrival to the world on track nine. The Ride-like shimmer of "Slide Away" (track two) and the droning anthemics of "Blue" (track seven) represent the debut full-length admirably, though a little context would be nice.
On the other hand, the sophomore album's "This Is Music" makes a stirring opener for any compilation, perfectly melding McCabe's searing guitar lines with Ashcroft's spacey vocals. "If love is a drug then I don't need it," Ashcroft declares. The second single from the second record, "On Your Own," introduced audiences to the acoustic balladry-- with handclaps!-- that would reach full bloom on Urban Hymns. It also proved that Ashcroft suffers from the same lyrical banality that often marked Noel Gallagher's compositions. "Gotta get rid of this hole inside," Ashcroft chants, and it sounds like a revelation rather than a tired cliche. Two tracks earlier, "History" is another A Northern Soul ballad, with strings from John Lennon's "Mind Games" and enough rarefied sadness for a Ford Madox Ford novel.
This Is Music boasts four songs from The Verve's masterpiece, Urban Hymns, and all are as revelatory now as they must have been when they capped off Ashcroft's Brit-rock bildungsroman. "Sonnet" verges on sappy, but some of Ashcroft's Bono-tastic bombast makes the song soar. "Lucky Man" applies the same formula to existential angst and what Whitney Houston called "The Greatest Love of All." Both ballads are good, but neither can compare to "The Drugs Don't Work," a marvel of subtlety amid world-weary lyrics-- "All this talk of getting old is bringing me down"-- and understated strings. This was a hit because it's fucking great. It's that simple.
"Bittersweet Symphony" marches brazenly through a day in the life, staring head-on at the immutability of the human spirit and our paradoxically mercurial nature ("I'm a million different people"); both realities are true, the song suggests. In America, it's The Verve's only well-known song, but it's one hell of a legacy.
Of course, The Verve also are to blame for the uneven British wuss-rock of Travis (once likened to "cheese on toast" by Damon Albarn), Keane, and The Veils. They've even influenced American bathos-mongers like Howie Day, who's been known to cover "The Drugs Don't Work" in his tantrum-filled live shows. Alas, the two bonus tracks at the end of the compilations don't bolster The Verve's defense. Urban Hymns-era unreleased track "This Could Be My Moment" is elegant, uplifting, and as catchy as a TV jingle, but it lacks the world-conquering vision of the songs that actually made that album. "Monte Carlo" features a pleasant bass groove, but as soon as I finish this sentence I'll have forgotten how it goes.
In sum, This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 features 12 classics and two superfluous tunes from the vault. If you already own the albums, you won't have much use for this compilation. New fans ought to start with Urban Hymns and work their way back, and the arbitrary track order here serves no one. But the songs' quality remains undeniable, and a greatest-hits disc is better than no Verve at all-- at least until Ashcroft writes the final chapter with a "Behind the Music"-inspired reunion tour.
