According to one review of The Verve's recent concert in Detroit, lead singer Richard Ashcroft ended an intense performance of Come On with these words: "F*** it man, that's why these songs are so good! We're not some cheesy f***ing rock 'n' roll band, and these aren't cheesy rock 'n' roll songs - they come from the soul." In fact, it's laughable that he should be so much in awe of himself and his mediocre band. Sadly, though, nobody's laughing - the music press has, almost without exception, been heaping praise on The Verve for the past year and have accorded near-sacred status to the most recent album, Urban Hymns.
"It's possible to scale heights in a way which not only sets the standard for the rest of the year, but the decade too," was Mojo's conclusion when it reviewed the album last year, typical of reviews in general. The consensus is that The Verve are The Real Thing. And, of course, the media loves a dramatic success story - Urban Hymns has, since its release last autumn, sold in the region of five million copies, which has catapulted a previously troubled and none-too-successful band to the top of the heap.
The mania for The Verve is reaching new heights with the approach of their Slane concert on Saturday (their "date with destiny", according to a Hot Press headline).
It's a shame that so much energy and enthusiasm has been invested in promoting such a second-rate band. Urban Hymns, running for nearly 70 minutes, is a humourless drudge of an album. There is no subtlety, no artistry - it's a collection of basically short songs, usually extended ad nauseum in epic, guitar-laden arrangements. Ashcroft's lyrics are comically pretentious and his harsh, nasal voice is profoundly ugly.
The famous Bitter Sweet Symphony illustrates all of the above points admirably. The song has a single redeeming quality - a simple, but striking string accompaniment (which contains a sample from an old orchestral arrangement from a Rolling Stone song, The Last Time, a fact which landed The Verve in legal problems). However, there is no other musical interest in the song, so this same string motif is retained almost continually for the song's six-minute duration. The good idea quickly becomes a monotonous crutch. It's disturbing that a song with only this motif and an unchanging four-chord sequence should be extended for so long, but it's also typical of the band. Lacking ideas, they try to compensate through great length, creating epic, mantra-like songs. And this kind of repetitiveness is (despite all the talk of the band's uncompromising authenticity) a handy commercial device - people who enjoy this kind of music don't like having to cope with anything too varied or unpredictable. Of course, Bitter Sweet Symphony could be excused if it were a one-off experiment, but as the album proceeds it rapidly becomes clear this is the only kind of song The Verve are capable of writing - long, slow, repetitive, and in permanent climax. Everything from The Rolling People to Space and Time to Lucky Man follows roughly the same plan. Even when viewed purely as musicians, The Verve have little to celebrate. The hugely-admired guitarist Nick McCabe (who has apparently left the band now) just turns up the volume and hacks away - there's no nuance and very little dynamic. Drummer Peter Salisbury has an easy time considering the songs vary so little in tempo, but he nonetheless plays like he's wading through mud.
It would be unfair to dwell for too long on the lyrics: very few bands write material that looks acceptable in cold print. However, they are important as an indicator of Ashcroft's deep pretentiousness. In Bitter Sweet Symphony he sings: "I need to hear some sounds that recognise the pain in me [...] /But the airwaves are clean and there's nobody singing to me now." It goes right back to his Detroit claim that "these aren't cheesy rock 'n' roll songs".
What The Verve offer is meant to be profoundly true, rising above the dross on the radio and speaking for the disaffected masses. Well frankly, there's far more artistic value in a well-crafted, tuneful Spice Girls song than there is in any of Ashcroft's ugly, unmusical repertoire. But my favourite lines come from another huge hit, Lucky Man: "Happiness, something in my own place/I'm stood here naked smiling/I feel no disgrace with who I am". Jon Landau, in his days as a rock critic, once observed that most rock musicians "are banal, amateurish and insipidly stupid when they try to express their philosophy of life in the context of popular music". He wrote that 20 years ago, but it's still mighty relevant today.
