Under the Radar - News - New Verve Best Of to Include Two Unreleased Songs

The late-great British band The Verve are finally being honored with a best of disc, This Is Music – The Singles, and the exciting news for fans is that it will include two previously unreleased songs. One of the songs, "Monte Carlo," has previously appeared in demo form on fan distributed bootlegs and was originally recorded with producer John Leckie during some early demo sessions for the band’s final and biggest
album, 1997’s Urban Hymns. The other unreleased song, "This Could Be My Moment," appears to be unknown to even die-hard Verve fans.

As per its title, This Is Music – The Singles only collects the band’s singles (bar the two unreleased tracks) and does not contain any album tracks that were not released as singles.

The full tracklisting for This Is Music is as follows:

This Is Music
Slide Away
Lucky Man
History
She's A Superstar
On Your Own
Blue
Sonnet
All In The Mind
The Drug's Don't Work
Gravity Grave
Bittersweet Symphony
This Could Be My Moment (Previously Unreleased)
Monte Carlo (Previously Unreleased)

This Is Music is scheduled for release in England on Virgin records on October 11th – a US release has yet to be confirmed.

The Verve (singer-lyricist Richard Ashcroft, guitarist Nick McCabe, Bassist Simon Jones and drummer Peter Salisbury) originally formed in Wigan, England in 1999. After the release of their first two albums, 1993’s shoegazey A Storm In Heaven and 1995’s more rockin’ A Northern Soul, the band split. The band reformed in 1996, originally without McCabe, but with new guitarist Simon Tong. This is when the original demo for "Monte Carlo" was recorded. McCabe then rejoined (with Tong also remaining) and the band finished Urban Hymns. Previously, The Verve were critics darlings with a devoted fanbase, but Urban Hymns propelled the band into the mainstream when "Bittersweet Symphony" became a worldwide hit and "The Drugs Don’t Work" and "Lucky Man" also became hits in their native England.

Unfortunately, all the attention appeared to be too much, and McCabe left the band in 1998 and the band split for the second and final time in April 1999, at the height of their career.

Since The Verve’s split, Richard Ashcroft has released two solo albums, 2000’s Alone With Everybody and 2002’s Human Conditions, both of which received mixed reactions from the critics and fans. Drummer Peter Salisbury played on both albums and is in Ashcroft’s touring band. Simon Jones and Simon Tong formed The Shinning, who broke up after 2003’s poorly received debut album True Skies. Tong then became Blur’s touring guitarist, following the departure of Graham Coxon. Nick McCabe has been more elusive, but has guested on albums by Faultline and John Martyn. McCabe has also recently remixed a song by UK Verve influenced band The Music. McCabe’s remix of The Music’s "The People" will appear on the b-side of The Music’s single "Freedom Fighters," which is due out in the UK on September 6th. Richard Ashcroft’s third solo album is currently due out in the UK on February 7th 2005.

Richard Ashcroft was interviewed in Issue 4 of Under the Radar - the Summer 2003 issue. Read extra quotes from that interview that didn’t make it into the print article here:

www.undertheradarmag.com/issue4/ashcroft.html