My Top 10 Albums of the 90s: (2) Urban Hymns - The Verve

[This is the ninth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Having already dissolved once following the 1995 release of the tortured masterpiece A Northern Soul (after years of record-shattering ecstasy consumption and arguments between guitar wizard Nick McCabe and electric frontman Richard Ashcroft), the Verve and added guitarist Simon Tong decided to try again in 1997. Unlikelier still than the reformation was the immediate, worldwide success the band was to become, riding on the coattails of its signature song, "Bitter Sweet Symphony." Famously, the band would ultimately derive little benefit from the track, as courts ruled that the sample around which it had been built - not the lead violin riff, but the orchestral backing part, taken from a symphonic recording of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time" - had been used more than the publishers' permission had allowed for. Yet the song and the album on which it appeared would finally herald the arrival of the group which the Verve's back catalog had always suggested they could be. Musically, Urban Hymns was in every sense a progression from their previous work: the song structures were tighter, the instrumental work (particularly McCabe's guitar and Peter Salisbury's thunderous drumming) more muscular, and the ballad-with-strings formula finally perfected, not only on "Bitter Sweet Symphony," but also on a pair of equally stunning singles, "The Drugs Don't Work" and "Lucky Man." However, the most momentous change came in Ashcroft, as the sweeping lyrical tendencies he'd nurtured since the birth of the band appeared fully matured and in miraculous harmony with the shaman-like charisma he was known to exhibit on stage. So where his whispered assurances ("You've got to tie yourself to the mast, my friend/And the storm will end") and frenzied barks ("This is a big fuck you") would elsewhere seem incongruous, they here feel of a piece and actually reinforce one another. The result is an album that plays like a soundtrack to life itself, encompassing its lows and its highs; its pain and its beauty; its merciless gut-punches and its ethereal moments of redemption. Following another acrimonious breakup Ashcroft would pursue a solo career sadly marked primarily by a descent from prophecy to platitudes, and indeed, no music from members of the Verve would subsequently come near recapturing the magic (2007's solid reunion album Forth notwithstanding). However, Urban Hymns will forever demonstrate the group operating at the peak of its ambition and inspiration – with truly remarkable results.