Year Released: 1997
Label: Hut Records / Virgin Records
Year Bought: Can't remember
It's hard to critique this album as it's just one of those albums that everyone universally considers to be great. I'll be honest, I've never really listened to it properly. The singles are ace, and I'm sure I gave it a spin way back when, but when it came out I was still on my Oasis trip, and then shifted to Radiohead and Jeff Buckley, so Urban Hymns just sort of lived in my peripheral vision. I knew the singles, that was enough for me.
As album openers go, Bittersweet Symphony is up there with Smells Like Teen Spirit on Nevermind and Rock n Roll Star on Definitely Maybe as the perfect encapsulation of a band's ethos. It's the perfect headline. You can read on, but it tells you everything you need to know.
When I saw Richard Ashcroft playing this at Wembley last year supporting Oasis, the whole stadium got to their feet like it's the national anthem. Let's be honest, it pretty much is. It's still, even after all these years, perfect. Simultaneously timeless and of its time.
Next up is Sonnet, one of the big four tracks from this album which helped make it such a hit. Most bands don't have four songs this good across their whole career, let alone on one album.
After Sonnet comes Rolling People, which, to be honest, now feels a bit generic. It's huge sounding, but just so incredibly 90s. It could be Second Coming-era Stone Roses or Ocean Colour Scene. Lovely shuffling drums but it does that thing of just sitting on one chord for aaaaaaaagggggeeeeeeeessssssss at the end.
The Drugs Don't Work is quite simply incredible. I bet Noel Gallagher cried into his cocaine-soaked pillow at Supernova Heights when he heard this. It has everything. Even shla la la la backing vocals. I've always loved how Ashcroft pulls back his vocals on this a bit. He could easily over-sing it, but it's delivered with such a tired resignation it's just beautiful.
Catching the Butterfly is more of that faux 60s psych indie bands were chasing in the 90s, and Neon Wilderness is a throwaway Spiritualized song.
Space and Time has a Paul Weller feel to it, but is pretty epic.
Weeping Willow has a strong Oasis influence ... although, in fact, that should be the other way round, as Noel Gallagher seems to have ripped this off for Dying of the Light from his second solo album.
Lucky Man — the last of the Big Four — is obviously a classic, and has a degree of self-reflection that was often lacking in Britpop.
One Day is a bit paint-by-numbers lyrics but after Lucky Man, and lyrically it's a bit SuperHans Guide to Life:
Oh, oh don't you wanna find?
Can't you hear there's beauty in life?
The times, the highs, breaking up your mind
Can't you hear there's beauty in life?
Same with This Time. Sometimes it all feels a bit 'peace and love, man'. At least This Time has some baggy percussion tucked away in the mix.
Velvet Morning is lovely tune, and like all of the album, the mix is superb. It all sits together so well. There's a lovely low end on the record and real warmth in the mids. Ashcroft's voice sounds so good. Never too reedy or pushing.
Come On is the closer and has the obligatory 90s style guitar noodling while Ashcroft shouts "Come On" over the top and then "fuck you" etc etc.
There's an ambient so-called hidden track but it doesn't add much to anything.
This album is without doubt one of the best Britpop albums from the Oasis side of the scene (as opposed to the Blur/Suede arty side). Yes it is a bit generic at times, but it's the best of that genre. The Big Four singles are all amazing, and this album still influences bands today - perhaps without those bands even realising. I don't really have an emotional attachment to it as a body of work, but I can't deny how brilliant it is. So I won't.
9/10
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