Travesty of a follow up, ruining the memory of The Verve that were... (Urban Hymns - The Verve)

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Product:	Urban Hymns - The Verve
Date:	18/11/01 (47 review reads)
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The Verve were a magnificent band, and A Northern Soul is a twentieth century masterpiece. But this... This album is a let down. For two weeks as an 18-year-old, this album ruled my life, but now... The events surrounding its release were more a part of that euphoria than the actual music. Urban Hymns is bereft of the passion, the anger, the utter inability to compromise that made A Northern Soul so staggeringly good. Instead we get an over-produced, slick piece of target-market mush, shiny and empty. Posturing over passion, dull singer-songwriter tedium over explosive, expressive inter-band telepathy. Richard Ashcroft, over the course of The Verve's three albums literally pushed Nick McCabe out of the band's sound, his amazing, evocative guitar work becoming steadily lower in the mix, until Ashcroft even took over songwriting duties. Sonnet over Drive You Home? Rolling People over Life's An Ocean? I think not. Bittersweet Symphony remains a staggering accomplishment, but it has been raped by its own success, and there is too much dull, lifeless journeyman filler on thsi album. Velvet Morning over Stormy Clouds? No, no, NO. Even when they do try and loose the shackles of Ashcroft's mediocre songwriting, such as on Come On, they never cut loose, they never indulge, they never throw caution out and make merry hell. Where's the sonic excess? It died a death in favour of commercially acceptable schmaltz and monotony. I haven't listened to this album all the way through in over two years. A Northern Soul is rarely away from my hi-fi.

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