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24 September 2007
Absolutely brilliant
This CD is absolutely brilliant. The fact that there are even people saying that it's anything less than a classic is utterly astounding to me.
If you're a fan of more mellow British music, this CD is a perfect fit. The Verve don't have the swagger or the sing-along choruses that Oasis have, and it works for them. The lyrics are (almost entirely) wonderful, and the songs themselves have a timeless feel to them. The CD opens with the classic Bitter Sweet Symphony (often people call it "Bittersweet Symphony," but that isn't the proper title), and I think that song alone could lyrically save the entire CD, if the album actually needed it. It doesn't. How can you forget lines like "I let the melody shine/Let it cleanse my mind/I feel free now/But the airwaves are clean/And there's nobody singin' to me now"? Next is Sonnet, which is another piece of Verve excellence. But after Sonnet, I feel that the CD loses a bit of steam with The Rolling People. To me, this is the weakest song on the CD. It has a great feel to it, but the lyrics just aren't quite up to par. The album is saved immediately by the next track, The Drugs Don't Work. This song is absolutely brilliant. It turns what could be a very depressing song into a song that somehow manages to convey a note of hope. Catching the Butterfly is next, which is also a song with a great feel to it. Neon Wilderness has one of my favourite lines from this album: "In a neon wilderness/He was restless/Escape loneliness/Find a new address." Space and Time follows, and while I love the song, it's definitely not one of the stand out tracks for me. Weeping Willow, however is the stand-out track from the entire album for me. It's also probably the most underrated song off Urban Hymns. Richard's voice has this almost ache to it, and the lyrics always affect me in one way or another. Lucky Man is considered a "classic" song in England, and with good reason. It's rather uplifting compared to most Verve songs, and it's generally just a very good song. One Day and This Time follow, and when I first got the CD I could never remember the name of those two, but both also have some brilliant lyrics in them. Velvet Morning is a moody piece of brilliance, and the closer, Come On, is just a rockin' good tune. It's completely different from the demos, though, even the lyrics are changed, but it's still great. The there's a hidden track, which, I hate to stay, is skip-worthy. It just has random baby crying and stuff, it's weird.
All in all, though, really, this is a CD you should not miss out on.