A Northern Soul

𝘈 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘯 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭 occupies an awkward middle ground. It leans toward Britpop, yet lacks the immediacy and clear hooks that defined the genre’s biggest albums. At the same time, it’s more varied and less uniform than the band’s later work, even if that comes at the cost of focus.

Released at a time when the spotlight was increasingly shifting toward bands like Oasis and Blur, the album struggled to stand out. It neither fully fits into the Britpop wave nor clearly sets itself apart from it.

The result is a record that feels somewhat diffuse. There are strong moments and a consistent atmosphere, but not enough contrast or direction to make it fully compelling from start to finish. It’s a solid album with interesting ideas, but one that never quite comes together.

It's fine...just standard brit-pop with a little shoegazing vibe. Nothing that really stands out as special?

in "A new decade" the fade in is super cool. it also just has a really cool guitar/bass relationship if that makes sense? in "This is music" "if love is a drug then i don't need it/it ain't for me" is nice lyrics. awesome guitar again. it has the classic verve sound flowing through it. I actually really like the clapping in "on your own" which is strange because i usually DESPISE whenever people start clapping in songs or when they hear songs, i dunno why. the clapping in this song just feels like a part of the drums though. so it goes is like lucinda williams' guitar. I know she's not the one playing the guitar on her songs it's those two guys i think, but anyways it's under her name, so it's lucinda william's guitar. Lyrics relate back to the previous song which is cool. I don't know if they meant to do that but if they did it's cool they're thinking of their album more as a whole piece rather than just separate things that happen to work and sound good together. "another drink and i won't miss her" i like this line. "a northern soul" sounds like red hot chili peppers or "simple man" by lynyrd skynyrd. the interlude song is not something i would seek out on it's own but it's okay to listen to. I like the lyrics of "history". "life's an ocean" has fun rhyming and the bass is awesome. this album is pretty good. i only have heard bitter sweet symphony from the verve plus maybe one other song from the same album. most of this sounds how i expected it to sound, not in a bad way at all. honestly i think i would really like this album if the songs were shorter. i feel like these songs are so long and it's just the same thing all the way through which can be a bit monotonous to listen to at points.

I hated The Verve’s other album on this list, why would this one be any different?

You can't keep making 6 minutes songs where the singer is hanging out on one note the whole time and nothing happens. No movement, verveless. Stop this madness.

Exceedingly uninteresting and overlong Oasis soundalike record

Es zeigt die Band auf dem Sprung vom psychedelischen Jam‑Sound zu kraftvollem, emotional aufgeladenem Britrock. Der rohe, dichte Klang von Songs wie This Is Music oder History verleihen dem Album eine intensive, suchende Atmosphäre.

Verve, don’t really care for them so not heard a full album. Sound to me like a mix of Radiohead and Oasis, but without the innovative instrumentation of Radiohead and somewhat creative lyrics of Oasis. By half way I was just fed up, repetitive sounds and words let me be.

I like the general sound of this album (moody rock with the vibe of Oasis), but I felt like something was left to be desired. The songs kind of stretch out too long. "History" is the only song that stood out to me because of how the emotional feeling came through in it, which was reminiscent of their song I am familiar with and really like, "Bitter Sweet Symphony". Overall, I thought this was pretty okay.

The Good: Soul music!
The Bad: We had to travel up north to listen to it…
The Ugly: Finding out that Verve is northern slang for Verve…

I’ve already listened to that other The Verve album on this list (sorry for the spoiler alert there), you know, the one with their only real hit.
So when this album was presented to me my thoughts, in no particular order were:
Are you fucking kidding me?
Fuck you Mr Dimery!
Northern Soul… there’ve been some excellent norther soul bands, so let’s give this a spin…

Overall, really not that bad an album, except that it suffers from one annoying aspect… the need to over-extend most of the tracks.
Trance music is great for people on drugs, yet when you are sober, it rubs the wrong way.

At the end of the day, I can say that I prefer this album over the other one that’s on the list, yet, seeing as I gave that other album 3*, while knowing that 4* are placed on a have to listen to again list, I will make it a tie…

3*

But why is this here?

Pretty much just brit pop.

Awful stuff. No business being on this list. 1/5.

ok - does not stand out

A little dirtier Oasis with worse sound quality and a little worse songwriting. Low 3

Vibes of local band make overblown attempt at immortality. It's amusing how much the length and tone of the Wikipedia entry match how overblown this is. Their songs are all half an idea stretched clumsily over six minutes.

Not as good as the other Verve album... bit of a snoozer.

The guy on the bottom looks super angry.

The Verve before Bittersweet Symphony was subpar, gee who would have guessed that...

Hell no.