Our main pop interaction with the band was a handful of successful singles from 1997′s Urban Hymns, which was the band’s final album for a long time until they released Forth in 2008 (which was actually a good deal better than it had any business being, though it isn’t represented on this list). Very simply, though, the Verve were never firmly a part of the American conception of the Britpop narrative. Unfailingly, they sounded very serious, when even Britpop figures as self-inflated as the Gallagher brothers provided punchlines at rapid-fire speed. They sounded like they had more to do with U2 and that they listened to American alternative well before Blur opened up to it. Where the big three of Oasis, Blur, and Pulp, all grappled directly with topics and images of Britishness, the Verve were always looking pretty much exclusively inward. (Which I guess isn’t terrible? But still.) There’s the very simple fact that they are associated with Britpop while actually being quite a bit different tonally and thematically. Having only released four albums and having broken up three times, the Verve’s statistics are somewhat Spinal Tap-worthy, or at the very least make them Britpop’s answer to Jane’s Addiction. Ashcroft doesn’t possess the cartoonish hilarity of the Gallaghers, or the mellowed-out likeability of Damon Albarn, or the bookishly, charmingly avuncular vibe of Jarvis Cocker. You’ve got their singer, Richard Ashcroft, a perfectly arrogant British rock star who continues to play that role even as his solo output has devolved into a mixed bag of adult-contemporary singer-songwriter-isms (the similarities between Ashcroft and Russell Brand’s Aldous Snow character are too striking to be coincidental). I can think of, well, quite a few reasons for this. This article by Ryan Leas first appeared on Stereogum as part of Britpop Weekįew British bands from the 1990s, Britpop or otherwise, have been pushed to the sidelines more forcefully than the Verve.
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