The Verve - Urban Hymns (CD 1997)

I bought it finally because everyday since release a snippet of this injects itself into the background noise and it is always heard and always attended to. It is inexplicable that this is not regarded as one of the ten best issues of all time. We actually listen to these songs like they were hymns, recognising that they represent something simple, valuable and missing from our day to day lives. People's lives are temporarily interrupted when a big track from this gets within earshot and they slow down and get thoughtful and wistful at the same time as though they were trying to remember something important that we are now totally alienated from. The 'Bitter Sweet Symphony' video is a work of mysterious art, is he charging towards something or desperate to escape something: is the nightmare before or behind him? Or is he just desperate to be heard without interruption? Nobody could listen to 'The Drugs Don't Work' without visualising a tower block. Guitar riffs that recall raindrops on windows that won't open looking out on walls of other windows that won't open. Punk was supposed to actualise this sense of urban deprivation and desperation but Punk never got this close.