Robert Moore 2009-01-01

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

NORTHERN SOUL was one of those albums that I knew was supposed to be really good, but that I simply hadn't gotten around to listening to. I was raiding a friend's CDs for new music to put onto my iPod and saw a copy of this. I almost instantly fell in love with it. I previously had primarily known the Verve from the wonderfully lush, beautiful single "Bitter Sweet Symphony." (My next online music purchase is probably going to be URBAN HYMNS, which my record store friends insist is better even than NORTHERN SOUL.) I was delighted to learn that the many virtues of that single could be found on many of the songs on the album.

I can't believe it took me so long to discover these guys. Richard Ashcroft is an amazing talent, an absolutely brilliant songwriter, while Nick McCabe is the best recent British guitarist I know this side of Bernard Butler (I'll add that while I do definitely prefer Butler to McCabe as a guitarist, I much more strongly prefer Ashcroft to Brett Anderson as a vocalist). But as great as Ashcroft and McCabe are, the arrangements are what put the songs way over the top in quality. Cut after cut excels not merely because of the melody, lyrics, or performance, but because of the perfect use of strings or layering of guitars. Each song is richly, lushly, wondrously layered to produce magical results.

Though this is one of those rare albums that simply has few truly weak cuts, the four that start the album off are especially great. I find the difference between albums created in the nineties and the new century to be fascinating compared to albums from the mid-eighties and earlier. Then artists tried to start the album off with a great first cut, then saving the other best songs for the end of Side A and the beginning and end of Side B. Now artists tend to frontload the albums. Though they usually save some of their best cuts for later on the disc, they almost always put their 3 or 4 best songs right at the beginning. These are followed by a couple of the weaker songs, before bringing back some of the best remaining material. Thus here "New Decade," "This is Music," "On Your Own," and "So It Goes" kicks off the album, but one of the album's few bad cuts, "Brainstorm Interlude," follows. It is pure filler that weakens the album as a whole. But as soon as that clunker ends, we get the delightful "Drive You Home" (featuring one of Ashcroft's nicer vocals) and the best song on the second half of the album, "History."

All in all, this is a brilliant, beautiful album. I can't wait to get to know URBAN HYMNS.

V. Nhim 2008-09-01

0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

As weird as it may sound, it took me probably 10 years to really appreciate this album. It is not that I did not like it at first. I really liked it after a couple of listens and afterwards I still really liked it. However, looking back at the type of songs that this album features makes me think this album is just beyond words. I would put this album as the best all time only if they included "The Rolling People" and "Let The Damage Begin" on this because they were also written, I believe, during these sessions. So many unbelievable rocking and tripped out tracks on this album such as "This Is Music", "A New Decade", "Life's An Ocean", "Stormy Clouds" and the reprise. "Life's An Ocean" is just one of the greatest songs ever written. And also their best live song in my opinion. It also has great softer songs I guess you could call them in "History", "On Your Own", and "History." Truly an album for the ages.

Larry Williams II 2008-05-06

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

I hear older guys always complaining that they "don't make music like they used to." They always like to compare today's music with that which they grew up with, classic stuff from the 60's and 70's, where the music was a story, and the band made an album, not just a bunch of singles that were mashed together under the same title.

Well, this is an album, not just a bunch of singles, and it is a testament to the history and greatness of both Rock and the British Invasion.

Listening to "A Northern Soul" is a journey, reminiscent of Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues, wherein a story is told over the course of an entire album. Today's music is, yes, a bunch of singles meant to be published on the radio piecemeal by Corporate Radio and its sponsors. But the Verve have captured something far more meaningful than a handful of singles they intended to have sold separately to Corporate Listeners...they captured a feeling.

The title track is the best, undoubtedly, but you can't listen to it without the rest, and you can't listen to it jumbled; it has to flow from the first, to the second, to the third, right down to the last track.

Everyone knows "Bittersweet Symphony" is one of the best rock songs ever, and certainly one of the best in the modern era, but the Verve are much more than just that one song; they are a story waiting to be told...through haunting guitar and a timeless voice.

The Rolling Stones? With all due respect, they can kiss my @$$, because they decided to steal the Verve's well-deserved royalties for Ashcroft's incredible writing. HE wrote the song, HE deserves the credit for it, and the Verve deserve the royalties that THEY - not Mick Jagger and Keith Richards - earned.

Listen to "The Last Time" by the Stones, then listen to "Bittersweet Symphony." They're not the same song.

The Piper at the Gates 2006-12-26

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

If you know of the Verve as the "Bittersweet Symphony" song and the Urban Hymns album, then you're definitely missing out on what the Verve is all about. A Northern Soul is in many ways, even better than Urban Hymns. Soul hads a slightly harder sound, with songs like "A New Decade","This is Music", the title track "A Northern Soul", and "No Knock on My Door". But the album also contains ballads like the excellent "On Your Own" and "So It Goes". It also contains a song that sounds a lot a track from Urban Hymns, which is "History". It also contains a few songs that sound a lot like A Storm in Heaven, their debut album, these being "Stormy Clouds", "Life's An Ocean", and "Drive You Home" All in all, the album has the right balance of sound, and at times, it's simply amazing. The album does have a weak song or two, one of which is "Drive You Home" But one of the best things I like about this album is being able to understand most of the lyrics. In their previous albums, the lyrics are echoed out and tough to hear, but A Northern Soul is much better, with Richard Ashcroft's lyrics coming to the front of the music.

JG 2006-06-22

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Rumored to have been written, recorded, and produced under the influence of ecstacy, this album is by far one of the most haunting listens of the mid-90s, and one of the best. Richard Ashcroft and his cronies with this album crafted a challenging and incredibly rewarding listen, that will have you coming back to it again and again. As with any band that chooses to craft music characterized as subtle, as opposed to those that lay it all out there, this album demands repeated listens before you can see it for what it really is.

Perhaps one of the darkest albums of the mid-90s in texture and content, this album sends you into the middle of a psychedelic freak-out storm at sea and doesn't let up until it's over. On first listen, any expectations of The Verve you might have formed after hearing "Birttersweet Symphony", will be blown away, and you'll be left wondering if A Northern Soul is the worst album you've ever heard, or the best, or maybe somewhere inbetween. You could imagine that this is a tough album to pin down and examine, since so much of it flies overhead in the first few listens. One day though, something clicks, and then it all makes sense.

"New Decade" and "This Is Music" kick things off into high gear, signalling what's to come. Loud yet soft guitars, hypnotic grooves and rhythms, uncharted and unchartable song structures, and Richard Ashcroft's abyss of angst-ridden lyrics, with sneering delivery. What follows jumps between the two extremes of hypnotic bass driven bluesy numbers "Life's An Ocean" and "Take You Home", to the other extreme of total psychedelic storms "Brainstorm Interlude" "A Northern Soul".

This album is a voyage into an endless well of angst brought on by loneliness and drugs, and that angst is displayed in an epic scope that easilly rivals that of Layne Staley and his own drug-fueled demons on the album "Dirt". Thankfully there is some kind of resolution to it however, encapsulated in the song "Sotrm Clouds", where Ashcroft tells us his story of "how his life seemed to change in a matter of days" asking "Why does change always seem to bring the rain?". If weren't for the resolution on this disc, it would be the next In Utero, perhaps the most alienating experience in music as we know it. A Northern Soul is a well-rounded, epic listen, one that anyone who has ever been plagued by angst can relate to, and even learn from. It's an enlightening listen.

If you are looking for a challenging and rewarding listen, as well as brutally honest emotional rock music, as opposed to radio-ready mainstream music of the present, I can only ask you why you don't have this cd already?