Life Is Not a Rehearsal – A Verve Retrospective

The world seems to shift once my main man Max introduced me to The Verve. All of a sudden we were like Kerouac and Cassidy high on benzedrine in some beat nightclub, standing on wobbly tables and yelling ‘go, man, go!’ as Charlie Parker played his horn.

As far as music to choose while you’re having a spiritual epiphany, you could do worse than The Verve. With their generation of pundants lost in a false debate about whether Oasis or Blur were the best UK band of the moment, a better class were aware that The Verve beat both of those bands combined. While best known for their single ‘Bittersweet Symphony’, the Urban Hymns sessions that bred that undeniable album was something of a departure from The Verve’s signature sound, ostensibly conceived as a solo album by frontman Richard Ashcroft. Their early records featured a more equitable contribution from guitarist Nick McCabe, who provided a psychedelic palette so dreamlike and immersive that I sometimes wonder if Max actually exists.

Track List

Verve Are Rising (Demo)

A Man Called Sun

Feel

Already There

Make It Till Monday

Slide Away

No Come down

Where the Geese Go

One Way to Go

On Your Own

So It Goes

Drive You Home

History

Reprise

Life-s Not a Rehearsal (Life’s an Ocean Mix)

MSG

Interview

Lucky Man

The Drugs Don’t Work (Demo)