Comments on: My Thoughts Big I Just Can’t Define (THE VERVE – “Bitter Sweet Symphony”) https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony Lollards in the high church of low culture Sat, 04 Jun 2022 09:31:11 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Scott https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2570925 Sat, 04 Jun 2022 09:31:11 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2570925 Bitter-sweet symphony is possibly the most boring durge I’ve ever had to subject my ears to. From it’s funeral like pace and crap beet to it’s endless repetition it makes my ears bleed.

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By: Kit https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2371121 Wed, 13 Nov 2019 22:19:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2371121 Great piece, Tom – love the different sense of engagement coming from you writing about a culturally dominant #2 rather than a grim obligation #1, too :)

“On the other hand, he’s got the song back – apparently all he had to do was ask! Must write to Carter..”

Carter finally put After The Watershed on The Love Album a year ago, presumably not after a plea to get the publishing back, but that as one track on an 11-LP coloured vinyl box set it would only amount to, say, as much as a single Spotify stream… https://www.cherryred.co.uk/grab-the-last-few-copies-of-our-massive-carter-usm-vinyl-box-set/

“I feel like the Fatboy Slim remix of Pierre Henry’s ‘Psyche Rock’ is a Big Beat remix of BSS”

ooh!

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370690 Mon, 11 Nov 2019 11:42:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370690 No, you’re right, PinkChampale: post-Imperial Phase Oasis is noxious in its mediocrity, not any particular conviction.

That said, I can’t over-emphasize how bereft of any merit the back end of SotSoG is. It makes the back end of This Is My Truth sound like a Greatest Hits. I just imagine Noel recording this stuff alone in the South of France, thinking ‘Christ, we used Fade Away and Acquiesce as B sides!’

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By: PinkChampale https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370401 Sat, 09 Nov 2019 20:02:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370401 @10 Bang to rights! I did nearly add a caveat about not knowing any post-Morning Glory album tracks, but I figured it might be unnecessary – the late Oasis’ I’ve heard is obviously rubbish, but none of it seems offensive to my sensibilities in the way that Cast no Shadow is. But probably I’m underestimating Noel and the boys.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370265 Fri, 08 Nov 2019 21:49:39 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370265 BSS would have been a 9 for me in 1997 when Urban Hymns was probably my favourite new album. I’ve been ground down to a 6 or 7 since from hearing it again and again and again…

This is what I wrote about Urban Hymns when I relistened after Richard Ashcroft finally got the writing credit back for BSS:

Justice at last then for Richard Ashcroft. You’re a slave to money until Allen Klein dies. Feels cruel to point out that the now infamous string loop, the bone of so much contention, is far and away the best hook on Urban Hymns, lilting and swaggering its way through megahit and opener Bittersweet Symphony with a fleetness of foot which generally eludes its samplers.

You can glimpse flashes of the younger, darker, noisier, strung-out Verve: Some of Nick McCabe’s guitar work here and there or Ashcroft harmonising hypnotically with himself on Catching The Butterfly. To its detriment though, Urban Hymns is Richard Ashcroft’s album. Whatever esoteric direction his more bandmates head, they’re dragged into the slipstream of his anthemic ambitions and squeezed to the margins by his imposing personality and often heavy-handed singing.

“A combination of Feel My Pain and Hear Me Roar,” said Tom Ewing of The Small Faces’ All Or Nothing which he pegged as a proto-Ashcroftian song in his #1 singles blog Popular and that’s definitely a charge I’d level at most of Urban Hymns. Pretty country-rock ballads, swaggering stadium indie anthems, psychedelic drone-fests, all are tarred with Ashcroft’s multi-tracked cosmic shaman drawl and feathered with his cosmic-er shaman-er lyrics.

At its worst, Urban Hymns combines Oasis’ megalomaniac grandiosity with Ocean Colour Scene’s classic rock fetishism. Ashcroft has neither the brute hookcraft of a Noel Gallagher nor the patience and vision of a Kevin Shields or Jason Pierce. Every ballad bids for Wild Horses-style country yearning before building into an arms-aloft cosmic workout, multi-tracked Ashcrofts chanting over each other. I’d probably play Cast’s Walk Away before I’d listen to The Drugs Don’t Work again even though The Drugs Don’t Work is about Richard Ashcroft losing his father to cancer and Walk Away is probably about John Power feeling a bit bummed out cos he ran out of Rizlas.

All of which is a very roundabout way of saying that Richard Ashcroft is kind of a drag, man. I wanted to get this out after the Bittersweet Symphony story broke but it’s taken me an age to finish this. I thought I’d have more to say but of all the albums I’ve revisited, this is the one I feel the least connection to. Heavy in the way hippies meant it.

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By: Tommy Mack https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370264 Fri, 08 Nov 2019 21:46:30 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370264 Pink Champale @ #2: “Cast no Shadow, Oasis’ tribute to, and attempt to channel the questing, spiritual blah of, Ashcroft has to be a contender for their worst song.”

There speaks someone who’s never heard Standing On The Shoulder Of Giants!

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By: lonepilgrim https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370105 Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:55:08 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370105 I suspect that once the music press had mostly abandoned the vaguely ideological stances of the 70s and early 80s it pretty much settled into celebrity gossip crossed with tales of derring do where the plucky protagonists wrestled with their demons and/or each other (rather than the alligators or Nazis that had featured in earlier mens pulp magazines). Most of its readers (myself included) had little musical understanding and so it was easier to get ones head round Romantic myths of the mad, bad and dangerous to know artist – even as it became one that quickly offered diminishing returns.
It was almost impossible to ignore or get hooked by this single at the time but it is a triumph of arrangement over content – the drum loop, string sample and guitar effects transform and envelop a pedestrian busker strum and thankfully obscure the lyrics to a few catchphrases. Tom talks about creative tension but this sounds as though everything has been united to create a leviathan that knocks down everything in its path

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By: Lee Saunders https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2370103 Thu, 07 Nov 2019 15:39:41 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2370103 I love Coming Up (By the Sea is my third favourite Suede song) and, to a greater extent than many, Head Music (unquestionably some duff tracks but sonically it keeps me hooked throughout except on Elephant Man. Indian Strings is again top drawer for me). Will also stand up for Cut the Crap despite everything, not least because This Is England is my favourite Clash song

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369967 Wed, 06 Nov 2019 14:17:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369967 Also, when the fractious relationships at the heart of those bands finally broke, their subsequent music was almost invariably uninteresting.

The Clash without Mick Jones, the House of Love without Terry Bickers, most of Morrissey’s solo career, the Richard Ashcroft Band: you’d have to pay me to listen to any of it. I do like Coming Up, I have to admit. But there’s no denying it is a more cartoonish version of Suede.

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By: Ed https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369963 Wed, 06 Nov 2019 13:21:20 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369963 The singer v guitarist dynamic is a great tradition in British rock, including the Kinks, Deep Purple and the Clash. But until you pointed it out I hadn’t noticed how indie bands in the 80s and 90s really perfected the form.

I guess if you were pushing it you could include the Libertines and Oasis there as well. Maybe Blur, too? I don’t really know their story, but didn’t they make a final album without the guitar player?

You mention the role of the music press creating selection bias by promoting the bands that had newsworthy internal struggles. It’s also worth pointing out that all the bands we have mentioned were *really good*, and their creative and personal tensions probably had something to do with that. The alchemy that turns four or five individuals into a great group is mysterious, but a love/hate dynamic certainly seems to be effective. As you point out, the bands that came later with no internal conflicts made no interesting music, either. Do Coldplay even have a guitarist?

I wonder if in some cases the limits of the bands’ commercial success were important, too.

The Who and The Rolling Stones have kept going for more than 55 years, despite deep divisions between their singers and guitarists. The need to pay a tax bill or buy another island has always seemed like an important reason for them to stay together. If your success is measured in NME covers rather than stadium tours, the incentive to keep working with someone you can’t stand (now) must seem rather less compelling.

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By: Steve Mannion https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369858 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 22:17:07 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369858 Currently pondering on whether to include this in my 100 Favourites of 1997 (which is taking too long to do as I insist on listening to everything that charted that year that’s easily hearable and ’97 still has the record for most chart entries of singles in a calendar year).

I think ITV’s use of it for England matches has thwarted any kind of proper charitable comeback effect although it may still squeak through.

Because of the chimes and vaguely similar chord sequence, and due to it being out around the same time, I feel like the Fatboy Slim remix of Pierre Henry’s ‘Psyche Rock’ is a Big Beat remix of BSS (also the clear inspiration for the Futurama theme) so there is that.

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By: Lee Saunders https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369854 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 21:29:31 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369854 Random thought: The Verve comeback of 2008 is for me a lot better than it gets given credit for. Yes, there are solo Ashcroft circuit drives like Rather Be, but there are also marvellous tracks like Sit and Wonder where he and Nick play off each other in the most wonderful way since 1994

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By: hardtogethits https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369831 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 17:52:19 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369831 Tom. I lived for 50 years without realising “cock of the walk” was a phrase. If I’d ever heard it, I must’ve thought someone meant to say “cock of the north” or something. Then on Sunday I encountered it whilst watching Celebrity Catchphrase. The next day, this. Connected?

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By: PinkChampale https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369805 Tue, 05 Nov 2019 12:44:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369805 Ha, all so backhanded I couldn’t tell if the mark would be high or low. I guess, in the end, on balance, this is very good. But I also struggle slightly to admit it.

I think the baleful influence thing worked both ways. Cast no Shadow, Oasis’ tribute to, and attempt to channel the questing, spiritual blah of, Ashcroft has to be a contender for their worst song.

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By: Andrew Farrell https://freakytrigger.co.uk/nylpm/2019/11/my-thoughts-big-i-just-cant-define-the-verve-bitter-sweet-symphony/comment-page-1#comment-2369723 Mon, 04 Nov 2019 22:48:32 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=32110#comment-2369723 I can’t think about this without thinking about Unfinished Sympathy – the names, the video, even getting the same string arranger – and as unflattering as the comparison was 20 years ago, it’s only gotten worse.

On the other hand, he’s got the song back – apparently all he had to do was ask! Must write to Carter..
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/23/726227555/not-bitter-just-sweet-the-rolling-stones-give-royalties-to-the-verve?t=1572907594975

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