Long acclaimed as one of the most innovative and spellbinding bands on the contemporary British pop scene, the Verve finally broke through to a mass international audience in 1997 with the instant classic "Bittersweet Symphony." By no stretch a study in overnight success, the group's rise was instead the culmination of a long, arduous journey that began at the dawn of the decade and went on to encompass a major breakup, multiple lawsuits, and an extensive diet of narcotics. Perfecting an oceanic sound that fused the exploratory vision of '60s-era psychedelia with the shimmering atmospherics of the shoegazer aesthetic, the Verve languished in relative obscurity while waiting for the rest of the music world to play catch-up, creating one of the most complex and rewarding bodies of work in modern rock & roll long before most listeners even learned of the group's existence -- only to again fall apart at the peak of their success.
Originally known simply as Verve, the group was formed in the small Northern English city of Wigan in 1989.
Richard Ashcroft -- a swaggering, shamanic figure in the classic rock star mold -- led the band, whose original lineup also included guitarist
Nick McCabe, bassist
Simon Jones, and drummer
Peter Salisbury. Sharing a collective fondness for
the Beatles,
Funkadelic, and Krautrock -- as well as a legendary appetite for psychedelics -- the quartet signed to the Hut label within months, debuting in March 1992 with the single "All in the Mind," the first in a series of indie chart-topping efforts featuring the eye-catching artwork of designer
Brian Cannon. Subsequent efforts like "She's a Superstar" and "Gravity Grave" captured an original musical identity growing by leaps and bounds, distinguished chiefly by
Ashcroft's elemental vocals and
McCabe's echoing guitar leads.
While Verve's long, liquid jams found favor on the British indie charts, pop radio looked the other way. Their majestic debut LP, 1993's
A Storm in Heaven, was a critical smash, but positive reviews from a variety of critics failed to translate into strong record sales. The following summer, Verve appeared on the second stage at Lollapalooza, a tour tempered by a string of disasters -- not only was
Salisbury arrested for destroying a Kansas hotel room, but
Ashcroft was also hospitalized after suffering from severe dehydration. Around that same time, the American jazz label also dubbed Verve slapped the band with a lawsuit, forcing the quartet to officially change its name to "the Verve." Sessions for the 1995 follow-up,
A Northern Soul, proved to be the last straw -- admittedly recorded under the influence of a massive intake of Ecstasy, the album's harrowing intensity was met with disappointing sales and little media recognition, and just three months after its release,
Ashcroft made his exit.
Although
Ashcroft quickly reassembled the Verve a few weeks later,
McCabe initially refused to return, and was replaced by guitarist/keyboardist
Simon Tong. Finally, in early 1997,
McCabe came back to the fold, and as a quintet they recorded
Urban Hymns, their breakthrough LP. Heralded by the smash "Bittersweet Symphony" -- a single built around a looped sample of a symphonic recording of
the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time" --
Urban Hymns launched the Verve among the U.K.'s most popular bands. Even at their peak, however, the curse of the band's past lingered on, as legal hassles awarded 100 percent of the song's publishing rights to ABKCO Music, which controlled
the Stones' back catalog. The second single from the album, the haunting "The Drugs Don't Work," became the Verve's first U.K. number one smash, while the hit singles "Lucky Man" and "Sonnet" soon followed. However, when
McCabe pulled out of the group's 1998 U.S. tour, the group suffered yet another blow. After months of rumors, the Verve officially split the following spring.
Ashcroft launched a solo career in the early 2000s and enjoyed success with a number of singles, including "Break the Night With Colour." Meanwhile,
Nick McCabe remixed a track for
the Music and collaborated with British songwriter
John Martyn, while
Tong and
Jones formed a short-lived band named
the Shining.
Tong later joined
the Good, the Bad & the Queen in July 2006, and although he continued to focus on his post-Verve projects, the remaining members of the Verve reunited in 2007 for an international tour. The band also set to work on another studio album,
Forth, which was released in August 2008 following a successful year of sold-out concerts and festival dates.
Yatha Sidhra's only record, the aptly titled A Meditation Mass, is a strange mystical experience stretched over four parts that segue almost seamlessly into one another, though the Spalax CD has a slight break between tracks two and three, where the original record changed sides. (The earlier Laser Edge reissue ran the tracks without the break.) Though the record was released in the early '70s, it has that late-'60s acid-haze, hippie ambience without coming off clichéd or dated. It starts off with watery noises and a wind hum, until eventually a flanged acoustic guitar riff gently floats into the mix, very dreamy and hypnotic over the whir of electronics. The piece slowly ebbs and flows as other instruments are pulled into the strange cosmic drift of sounds: washes of cymbals, vaguely ethnic percussions, a flute, vibes, and other sounds, even some group chanting with electronically treated voices, while the guitar weaves steadily to keep it together as it slowly builds up. On the second and third part the band veers into far more free-form improvisation, from jazzy sections with an upbeat swing to electric guitar over a trance-like rhythm to a bizarre drum and flute duel to intense freakouts before once again becoming calm and relaxed. Part four winds the album up where it began, with the acoustic guitar riff and tribal percussion and spacy electronics and flute building up to more chanting -- there is no beginning or end. One might compare Yatha Sidhra with other Krautrock bands like Ash Ra Tempel, Popul Vuh, or Limbus 3, but Yatha Sidhra's striking originality is like nothing else.
