Before Urban Hymns – now the 17th bestselling album in UK chart history – elevated the Verve from local heroes to festival headliners, the band made reverb-drenched cosmic rock. It was a stoned sound that reflected the spaced-out lifestyle that loomed over the group in their formative stage.
“The way we and our mates were living back then was crazy,” Richard Ashcroft recently told the Guardian when describing the days before their 1997 album. “A scene in This Is England brought it home. Shane Meadows faded in on this girl’s retina. It’s five in the morning; she’s watching some lads play a video game. She’s obviously wasted, and that shot just sums that period up. I feel lucky I got out alive.”
It has been over 23 years since Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Simon Jones and Pete Salisbury released A Storm in Heaven; about time, then, for the reissue treatment. Out in September and remastered by Chris Potter (co-producer of Urban Hymns), the deluxe versions of their 1993 debut and A Northern Soul (1995) will feature previously unreleased tracks and material from EPs, B-sides and BBC sessions.
The reissued version of A Storm in Heaven features two previously unreleased studio tracks – Shoeshine Girl and South Pacific – as well as a video for the latter, fusing footage of the Sawmills studio recording sessions as captured by producer John Leckie, and premiered below.
