The Verve album ‘Urban Hymns’ turns 25
By 1996, The Verve had reached breaking point. “We couldn’t carry on as we were,” Richard Ashcroft told the BBC back in 2012. “We’d been on an American tour, which had taken its toll. The recording of the album prior to this, Northern Soul, had also taken its toll on almost everyone – mentally and physically. We simply couldn’t go on anymore in that environment; it wasn’t conducive to creating anything.”
In need of respite, Ashcroft retreated to the West Country, where, away from the churn of London, he sat down to write some new music. “I was literally on my own with an acoustic guitar and a dictaphone. And what I used to do is I’d start recording ideas on the dictaphone, and I realised that if I played them back fast I found I had a condensed version of the song. And suddenly it made complete sense.” The songs on that dictaphone would eventually form the bulk of Urban Hymns.
Ashcroft knew he was on to something good. The songs were coming thick and fast, and he’d just picked a copy of Andrew Oldham’s ‘The Last Time’ at a local record store, which the band would later sample for their era-defining track ‘Bittersweet Symphony’. Ashcroft explained: “I’d just be walking around town with these tunes in my head, feeling as though I was almost emanating this, this glow.”
Ashcroft’s confidence was coupled with a hitherto unseen level of support from his newly-reformed band, who, during the making of Northern Soul, had been hesitant to let Ashcroft “take the reins” and drive the experimentally-inclined band towards a more straight-up rock sound. With Urban Hymns, things felt different. “I think with Urban Hymns I was given that opportunity because technically it was my record, and I became obsessed with trying to crystallise these emotions in the most perfect way.”
The recording process proved to be an almost spiritual experience for The Verve. The band’s former drummer, Nick McCabe, had previously refused to rejoin the group. Once Ashcroft explained that “nothing other than The Verve would do,” however, he agreed to return. With the full band back together, the studio had a new energy. “I literally couldn’t eat,” Ashcroft later said. “I needed to record. I was working big hours. And it was at that time that all the ideas for the backing – the percussion and where the claps would be – came together, and it just felt so right and easy for me in the studio.”
On release, Urban Hymns cemented The Verve as the leading light of British music. It was no surprise to Ashcroft, who had always had a suspicion his new material was going to blow Oasis out of the water. “You’ve got ‘Live Forever’ and all that, but wait until I record these. Because I’ve got ‘Sonnet, The Drugs Don’t Work,’ Lucky Man’, ‘Space and Time'”. Of course, in the end, The Verve’s ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ won the most praise. It became a modern British anthem and was inescapable for a time.
In 1998, The Verve won a Brit Award for Best British Band, appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone that same year. For many people, ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ continues to evoke a certain idea of Britishness that has long since faded. The much-fought-over single is hard-nosed yet thoughtful; celebratory yet deeply critical. It has certainly aged with more grace than tracks like ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’, which feel restrained by the mood of the era in which they were born. Tracks like ‘Bittersweet’, ‘Come On’, and ‘Weeping Willow’, on the other hand, tap into something timeless. So many years later, Urban Hymns is still an astonishing achievement.
