Virgin Records
2004
This Is Music: The Singles 92-98
About This Album
The '90s were filled with pop supernovas -- bands that burned brightly for one or two albums then sputtered to an anticlimactic conclusion. Of these bands, the Verve were one of the largest, perhaps because they imploded not once but twice. The first time, they collapsed following the release of their second album, Northern Soul, in 1995. They regrouped in the following year to record Urban Hymns, their commercial breakthrough, but lingering tensions between vocalist/songwriter Richard Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe tore the group apart for a second and final time. They never became the global superstars that their early partisans predicted -- it would have been hard to compete with Oasis during their heyday -- but as the 2004 collection This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 proves, the group was too arty, too low-key, too psychedelic, too English eccentric to be superstars. Some might have said the same thing about Radiohead, but that Oxford quintet had a heavy dose of U2-styled anthemic arena rock and Thom Yorke's melodies were bigger than Ashcroft's subtle, swirling tunes. Also, Radiohead started out relatively straightforward and grew strange, while the Verve took the opposite path, beginning as post-shoegazer neo-psychedelics and ending as tasteful traditionalists.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,4,7,11 and 13)

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