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To most American radio fans, The Verve is little more than a one-hit wonder. "Bittersweet Symphony" was the single that got them attention in the States, and it's hard to forget the video, with its startling images of frontman Richard Ashcroft strutting down the street in the video, bumping into people and walking over cars. Unfortunately for the band, this success was the beginning of the end. Citing "creative differences" after touring for the album, they called it quits. Ashcroft went on to release two controversial solo albums (nowhere near the quality of his work in The Verve), losing many hardcore Verve fans in the process, and other members formed other bands that garnered some media attention but never went on to any notable success.
None of the former Verve musicians are as strong as they were together, and this DVD collection (an audio CD of these singles is also available) is as good a representation of the band's catalog as a record company will allow. Longtime fans know that it takes more than a handful of singles to adequately convey the depth of The Verve's work, but this is a good place for the uninitiated to start.
The early videos on This Is Music, as a whole, are disappointing. "This Is Music", "She's A Superstar" and "Slide Away" rehash a lot of the same footage -- home videos possibly shot on a trip to the British countryside. "Slide Away" is particularly confusing, as an entirely different video for the song aired here on MTV's 120 Minutes in the early nineties, yet is absent on this DVD collection. Still, so much has been made of "Mad Richard" and British youths' fascination with ecstasy throughout the nineties that it's interesting to see the band captured in that era. Their music has an innocent, almost psychedelic quality -- much more so than when they landed on the airwaves with "Bittersweet Symphony". A lot of the band's early songs were the hippie anthems of their day, touting peace, sun, love and (of course) drugs.
The videos for The Verve's early singles present them as an unjaded, unspoiled band. Later videos show a different group altogether -- a tired, depressed, and strung-out Verve. If nothing else, the videos on This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 illustrate the toll that the rock 'n' roll lifestyle can take on a young group. There's a steady downward progression in both the band's appearance and in their musical substance; that's not to say the band's later work on Urban Hymns isn't incredible -- it is -- but the subject matter is much darker and the group's outlook much bleaker than it is on earlier albums A Storm In Heaven and A Northern Soul. When Ashcroft sings, in "Sonnet", "Like a cat in a bag / waiting to drown / this time I'm coming down", it doesn't take a psychoanalyst to understand what the man is feeling. Remember, he had a good reason for penning "The Drugs Don't Work".
Both the US and UK versions of the video for Urban Hymns' "Lucky Man" are included in the collection. Along with "Sonnet" and "Bittersweet Symphony", these videos give evidence that the record company knew they had a monster act on their hands -- you can see the budget on the screen.
As an added attraction, both the DVD and the CD versions of This Is Music contain two previously unreleased audio tracks from the Urban Hymns sessions. The first, "This Could Be My Moment", is complete trash -- not even fit for a slot on Ashcroft's last solo effort. It's a hokey, ridiculous castaway that the label should have kept in its vault. The second song, the incredible "Monte Carlo", is a different story -- you'll wonder why it was left off of the album. Shoegazey, but with a more modern beat, it will instantly remind you why The Verve was a Britrock powerhouse in its day.
While longtime Verve fans will snap up This Is Music without a second thought, most will probably feel a bit ripped off. Far from being the ultimate Verve collection, it seems perfunctory, even dispassionate, and certainly far from the exhaustive tributes earned by other groups. The videos are great to have, but the DVD's lack of live footage and quality bonus material will leave viewers longing for more. In other words, there's still plenty of room on the market for a definitive Verve collection, though it may be a few more years until we see it.
-- David A. Cobb
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