Urban Hymns (1997)

There's something about this album that seems just right out of time. It's got a date, of course—1997—and arguably the stamp of an era as well, tracing back along with peers Oasis to a '90s traveling-festival audience weaned on the Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, and Spiritualized. All my shoegaze pals loved this to pieces, let me put it that way, but the Verve managed to cut a wider swath than normal, appealing equally to Sheryl Crow or Squirrel Nut Zippers fans I knew too. They all loved it and I did too and still do. Interestingly, many have tended to be rather quiet about it, myself included, so it often comes up as a something of a surprise. I learned after awhile that it's one of those interesting albums to throw out there for opinions on. As often as not someone gets melty and soft in the eyes and reduced to, "I love love that album." And you know they mean it. It's an album to live with and return to frequently. It gets to be as comfortable as an old shoe. Yet it remains elusive too. When I sit with it playing, listening closely, it can start to seem long and draggy and underdeveloped. Most of its songs are over five minutes and three are over six. But just let it go and amazing things start to reveal themselves, in the textures and swirls of words and the ways it opens up wide. It can feel epic. It's coherent in that it's clearly all mined from the same lode, a stubborn walloping monolithic quality that persists through the whole long set. But the four singles—"Lucky Man," "Bitter Sweet Symphony," "The Drugs Don't Work," and "Sonnet"—are each lovely works in their own right, without need of differentiation (as you will notice, living with it), and when any one of them comes welling up out of any mix there's such a sharp pang of recognition it almost hurts for a moment. The stock in trade here is your basic raw emotional pain inflected by a wistful melancholy (or maybe that's vice versa), pulled off so effortlessly they are enabled to dwell at will on themes and feelings that would turn most others into the sorriest prancing buffoons. I keep waiting for the pratfall here—it's part of the tension that brings me back. When is it going to start sounding a little silly? I'm sure for many the answer is, "Already." But it hasn't happened for me yet, and I've heard it a lot now. One of the best of the '90s at large, no question.