When you sit down and listen to them - really listen to them - the three albums The Verve released in the 90's were all incredibly different to each other. It's not a realisation I've always had, but over the 17 years I've been listening to them, each has stood out at different points in time as being the best. I hope in another 17 years, I'll have cycled through them all again.
Urban Hymns was the first album I ever bought, having had my mind blown away by Bitter Sweet Symphony. That was in October of 1997; a full year later, I'd get my second album (This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours by the Manics) so it's easy to imagine quite how much play Urban Hymns got in early teens. By 2000 I had a Saturday job so could start to buy music at faster pace and amongst the first 25 purchases was The Verve's debut album, A Storm in Heaven, bought second hand at a record fair for a mere £5. I remember on the first listen enjoying it, but not as much as I hoped. Then The Sun, The Sea hit and I was knocked back. For some reason I was going out for dinner with my family that night, but I can still remember sitting on the floor in my room listening to the album before we went out and just being blown away by how heavy that song was.
The mistake I made was an easy one to make - I wasn't listening to the album loud enough. If you really crank the volume, Star Sail and Slide Away are songs of enormous proportions, and a huge duo to open the album. Put the volume even louder and Beautiful Mind sounds perfect. To my 15-year-old brain, it was floaty and did very little - I can still see how it's possible to think that (this was pre-, if not on the cusp of, nu-metal, so I was listening to a lot of stuff a lot heavier), but now I can see that it doesn't need to (necessarily) be heavy to all-encompassing, it can be shoegaze if you play it at the right volume. But, fuck me, those guitars at the start of The Sun, The Sea will snap you right out of that daze at any volume.
For a long time, in my teens and my early 20's, The Sun, The Sea was the only thing I really listened to A Storm in Heaven for (maybe a bit of Blue too - how I could have overlooked Slide Away for so long I don't know). Of course, the earlier of those years were dominated by Urban Hymns, and then for a while I considered A Northern Soul my favourite Verve album - I mean it had History on and, for a man who was made a music fan by hearing Bitter Sweet Symphony, how could I not fall in love with History. More recently, I've come to think that A Storm in Heaven might be my favourite Verve album. There's something brilliantly simple about it. History wouldn't have worked on an album like this. In fact, listening to it now, it's hard to imagine that they'd go on to write anything like that at all. The pained horns on The Sun, The Sea are almost the exact opposite of the strings that would provide the obvious highlights on their later albums.
Recently, they re-released the first two album as fancy boxsets with bonus music and DVDs, so I eagerly got both, in chronological order. Spending all that time with A Storm in Heaven really made me love it even more. The albums were also re-released on vinyl, which I eventually bought online. Back in the day, I'd seen original copies on eBay from time to time, but never bought one - they were often expensive and in fairly poor condition, unexpectedly given their age. I bought Urban Hymns on vinyl back when I was living in Cardiff (timed such that it'd be the 1000th cd/record I'd bought, which seemed fitting since it was also the first), and their 2008 album, Forth, when that came out. The idea of having all of them on vinyl was nice, but not one I'd actually thought much about pursuing. The re-releases put that idea back in my mind, and it is nice to have them all sat there together. I don't consider myself a huge Verve fan, but they were the first band I fell in love with and that's important.
Format: 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 10
Cost: £18.50 new
Bought: website
When: 20/07/17
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
