Author: R

The Verve – A Storm in Heaven / A Northern Soul (2016 remastered/deluxe)

It’s been a while since I listened to The Verve.

There was a time I knew every song on every album by heart. I’d cycle between A Storm In Heaven, A Northern Soul and Urban Hymns for months on end, as a result of which I could tell which version of ‘Slide Away’ was from which live performance or which studio session within the first three seconds.

But that was ten years ago.

Since then I’ve gone from hormonal, hopeful adolescence to jaded, emotionless adulthood.

But today I play A Storm in Heaven and I feel the same heady anticipation before ‘Already There’ as I did when I was 19. The same teenage tears sting my eyeballs when ‘A Man Called Sun’ asks me ‘do you think he’ll mind?‘ And I can still see the percussion on ‘Butterfly’ throbbing perfectly from a thousand miles away.

It takes a great deal of emotional strength to sit through a single album by the Verve, mostly because of the sheer intensity of their songs’ subject matter.

The Verve don’t mope about the end of a relationship as much as they brood over the inevitability of its demise.

I’ve gotta tell you my tale
Of how I loved and how I failed
Maybe you know it’s true
Living with me’s like keeping a fool

They don’t show you the glamour of a drug-fuelled high, but the pathos of the comedown.

There you were on the floor
Cut up and all alone
I held you

They don’t talk to you about the tragedy of death but the acceptance of the interminable sorrow that follows

Could be a lifetime before I see you again, my love
See you in the next one have a good time.

And they’ll push your misanthropic self to embrace the splendour of isolation

Life seems so obscene
Until it’s over

You come in on your own
And you leave on your own
Forget the lovers you’ve know
And your friends on your own

Verve listeners seem to fall predominantly into either the A Storm In Heaven or the A Northern Soul camp. While some of us pick at cobwebs in our lesser-frequented Urban Hymns corner, we all unanimously gloss over the very existence of Forth. However, if there is one song on The Verve’s last album worth listening to, it is ‘Mover,’ probably because it was around before Forth was a twinkle in Richard Ashcroft’s eye. On the new reissue of A Northern Soul, you hear the BBC Studio version, and you can tell it carries the same polish as the rest of their second album.

Perhaps that why A Storm In Heaven always seemed to me to be the stronger of the two. While there was no denying A Northern Soul’s musical maturity and the far more elaborate spectrum of emotions it covered (daring to venture into themes of defiance and hope, even), the Verve never truly returned to the young, naïve emotional rawness that defined their debut. On A Storm in Heaven and the B-sides it spawned you hear someone struggling to stay nonchalantly afloat when in reality, they’re far out of their depth (standard youthful stupidity). Meanwhile, on A Northern Soul, you hear experience and control (which is what you can expect when you’re a grown-up for whom death and taxes are de rigeur). A Northern Soul is not as personal, and far more guarded and reflective than its predecessor which sits young, loud and reckless.

A Northern Soul and its B-sides carry a slight self-consciousness, to the point that they are almost too flawless, while A Storm in Heaven is beautiful because it is flawed.

Both albums are perfection of different kinds and in being reissued, they give us the chance to be taken in, transported and transformed all over again. You meet the ‘Mover’ you never did. You discover ‘This is Music’ was once ‘King Riff’, while ‘The Rolling People’ was, in its original avatar, called ‘Funky Jam'(!). These extensive deluxe reissues are a six hour vortex into the best the Verve have ever been and I’d gladly know nothing else in the world if I could know every note on every song on these disparate recordings.

There is one thing, though, that reminds you that they are albums by the same group. The shared conviction that there is only one thing really worth living for.

You better pray when the music stops
And you’re left alone in your mind
‘Cause I’ll be hearing music till the day I die

Jesus never saved me
He’ll never save you too, and you know…
I’ve got a little sticker on the back of my boot
This is music.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

Night School – Blush

Turn on Night School‘s debut full-length, Blush, and you’ll immediately recognise Lexy Morte’s voice from her days with Whirr.

That’s not all that’s familiar. Brace yourself for wave after crashing wave of nostalgia: from the light charm of ’60s girl group harmonies, to the echoes of innocent adolescent romance, down to the scent of wholesome, sunlit, Americana.

Where, with Whirr, the melancholy of words and music served as the perfect foil to Morte’s angelic vocals, on Blush, the melange of happy notes and summer distortion only serve to amplify their sweetness. Added to this are lyrics that swirl around hopeful spring romance and teenage heartbreak – perhaps most profoundly evident on the aptly titled ‘Teen Feelings’ whose every verse, every chorus is blindingly dappled by the California sun. Summertime – school’s out forever […] Hope it’s just you and me forever.

Album opener, ‘These Times’ is a delightfully chipper track, swaying under the weight of its own optimism in the light of (possibly) devastating circumstances. The hopelessly dreamy words to ‘City Kiss’ (do you remember/the time we kissed at midnight/in the city lights/you are the one) are no different, but themes of youth helplessness are ubiquitous. Don’t be fooled by the exuberance radiating across this album. On ‘Casanova’, we mourn poor decisions (maybe I shouldn’t like you so much/you’re heavy and I’m a breaking crutch), while the cheery chords on ‘Lost’ are offset by lyrics as upbeat as lost my best friend/now I’m crying on my bed.

You’d be forgiven for believing, on your first listen, that Blush is the same track repeated ten times over. You’d be wrong. It’s only the first nine songs on the album that follow the happy harmonies template. The final track, ‘Pink,’ is a refreshingly mellow, reverb-free piano-led instrumental which, at just a minute and a half, is easily lost within the cheerful jangle that makes up the rest of the album. When you notice it – which you may not at first – you might find yourself wondering why it couldn’t have been just a little bit longer. Or perhaps why it couldn’t have had a friend nestled elsewhere on the record.

‘Pink’ aside, Blush is not a sad album. There’s no sign of cynicism, defeat or anger. Even at its lowest, the album remains eternally optimistic and, while the words may never articulate it, assures its listener that hope springs eternal.

Not recommended for realists.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

Nothing – Tired of Tomorrow

There’s no romance in a Nothing track. There’s no glamour, triumph or tragedy, even though each of their albums is born out of the third. Nothing never bemoan their lot. Their days, like ours, are made of bad decisions and bad luck. Their lives, like ours, a series of unfortunate events. And while we can live in the hope that tomorrow may be a better day, it probably won’t be.

There’s no sadness in this revelation; just a quiet acceptance of an unchangeable reality. There’s no anger, except towards impossible optimism thrust our way. ‘Vertigo Flowers’, the first track we heard off Tired of Tomorrow back in early March, is possibly the most overtly hostile song on the album, opening with an unembellished: “I hate everything you’re saying”. It’s a sonic powerhouse that manages to legitimise rather than stigmatise feelings of anxiety and paranoia with a simple “watch out for those who dare to say/that everything will be okay”.

Album opener, ‘Fever Queen’, is an explicit admission of mistakes made and repeated. It launches the album with a beautiful burst of exasperated noise. “I should know now / that I shouldn’t push you away”, Dominico Palermo stretches each syllable to its limits as if there can be no other way to drive the message home. We hear no promise of resolution – the damage is irreversible.

A little later, we meet another beautiful noise jam intro. ‘A.C.D (Abcessive Compulsive Disorder)’ is a glorious, self-loathing dissection of the end of a relationship, setting casually brutal imagery against compositions that serve as more than a passing nod to Nirvana. ‘Eaten by Worms’ may be an even more blatant homage to mid-Nineties alt-rock, with its jagged guitars, fierce percussion and soft-loud dynamics.

‘Nineteen-Ninety Heaven,’ on the other hand, falls directly into shoegaze territory, with references to Ride evident in the percussion. The composition here is nearly hymnal, and Dominico’s somnolent tone easy to misinterpret as tranquil, until you hear “I’m living in a dream world / life’s a nightmare.”

Like its predecessor, Nothing choose to close this album with the title track. The song ‘Tired of Tomorrow’ is little like the bulk of the album – or indeed anything Nothing have ever done before – exuding both vulnerability and defeatism- qualities heightened exquisitely with the support of a cello and violin. We’d met the same helplessness before when Guilty of Everything left us with the lines “I’ve given up / But you shoot anyway / I’m guilty of everything” ‘Tired of Tomorrow’ is less introspective and speaks to us directly, as sorrowful friends and comrades who are all “stranded in today”. “Rejoice if we are allied”, it says, “our everything Is empty on the inside”.

There’s no romance on this album. Nothing shine a stark white light on reality. As they always have.

Originally published on Drowned in Sound

The Veldt – The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur: The Drake Equation

Twin brothers Daniel and Danny Chavez of The Veldt have been making music without a break since they were in junior high school in the early Eighties. A penchant for whirlpool melodies and joyously meandering guitars left them with a confused audience (‘this isn’t reggae!’) and displeased labels (‘What do you mean you like the Cocteau Twins?’).

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that The Veldt have put as much energy into breaking out of the moulds they’ve been forced to squeeze into as they have into making the music they want to. On the behest of their label, they briefly changed their name to Apollo Heights because – so it was said – ‘The Veldt’ just wasn’t cutting it with the audience. They cheekily titled the only Apollo Heights album ever made White Music for Black People before switching back to their original moniker.

Ironically, despite enjoying the patronage of none other than Robin Guthrie, the Veldt remained relatively anonymous for most of their career. They’ve toured with The Jesus and Mary Chain and played support for Lush and Babes in Toyland without ever receiving the same degree of attention and adulation as their peers. Daniel recalls their time in the UK in the early Nineties – a period spent in the casual company of Blur, Aztec Camera and Echo and the Bunnymen It was then, at the Portobello Hotel, that the Clash’s Mick Jones greeted the band with a cheery ‘you’re Robin’s boys!’ while the twins were preparing to record their first album with Guthrie.

It was while they were recording this never-released album that shoegaze legends A.R. Kane (among others), stopped by the studio. Today, they’re pulling a cameo on ‘And It’s You’ – the final track on The Shocking Fuzz of Your Electric Fur.

It’s difficult to call this EP a comeback for The Veldt considering how the brothers didn’t ever stop making music, but there’s no doubt the A.R. Kane influence, the familiarly swirling guitars, and Daniel’s trademark falsetto make the EP taste particularly nostalgic.

The Guthrie may be strong with the opening track, but ‘Sanctified’ serves more as an ‘up yours!’ than anything else. You can easily imagine this track, with its choral overtones and closing ‘Hallelujah’s, as the sort of thing the Veldt’s initial audience and major labels would have been sold on. ‘This,’ they would say ‘is what a couple of black kids SHOULD sound like!’

Their exultation would have been short-lived as ‘In A Quiet Room’ sees the Veldt bringing in glorious swirling riffs to accompany the dreamiest verses and sweetest refrain to emerge from the 2010s. ‘A Token’ is another charmer, underlining delicate vocals with a characteristically ‘Souvlaki Space Station’ drone, ebbing and flowing gently through the entirety of the track’s five minutes.

Jim Reid was among those to come up to the Veldt when they were in the UK to say ‘I really like your vinyls.’ It took two more decades and an article in the Guardian for the rest of the world to catch up. Today Danny and Daniel find themselves preparing to go on tour supporting The Brian Jonestown Massacre ahead of the launch of the former’s full-length album (to be released later this year).

‘We’ve been called ‘difficult’ to work with,’ Daniel warned Anton, before sealing the deal. ‘Newcombe’s reply surprises no one: ‘I like difficult.’

Welcome home, The Veldt.