800. The Verve - A Northern Soul (1995)

Track Listing

1. A New Decade
2. This Is Music
3. On Your Own
4. So It Goes
5. A Northern Soul
6. Brainstorm Interlude
7. Drive You Home
8. History
9. No Knock On My Door
10. Life's An Ocean
11. Stormy Clouds
12. (Reprise)

Review

This is another band that I was not predisposed to like. What I know of The Verve are a couple of singles off Urban Hymns which never really made me interested in them, although I would like to see how long Richard Ashcroft would last in real life if he kept bumping into people like that. How inconsiderate.

So I was pleasantly surprised with this album. I didn't love it, but it is really pretty good, and considerably better than I imagined. There are a few highlights in it, some really beautiful songs and some pretty good lyrics.

It is not as insular as Oasis for example, it shows some influences from more recent American bands like Pavement and the Lemonheads. From the evidence of this album they seem to be infinitely more talented than their more famous friends Oasis. And yes I enjoyed it, and I thought I would really hate it, so I learned something.

Track Highlights

1. On Your Own
2. History
3. Life's An Ocean
4. A New Decade

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Nick McCabe has described the first three weeks of the sessions (which have become semi-famous for the band's enormous intake of ecstasy) to be the happiest of his life. Over time, however, friction started to develop between Richard Ashcroft and McCabe, and after the album failed to become a commercial success, Ashcroft disbanded The Verve (though he reformed it several weeks later). Despite its lack of critical success on its release, the album is now hailed as an underrated classic by the music press.

On Your Own: