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A Storm in Heaven

1. "Blue"
   Released: 10 May 1993
2. "Slide Away"
   Released: 20 September 1993

A Storm in Heaven is the debut studio album by English alternative rock band The Verve (at the time just called Verve), released in June 1993 on the Hut Recordings label. It charted at #27 in the UK.

Contents

• 1 Overview
• 2 Track listing
• 3 B-Sides
• 4 Personnel
• 5 External links

[edit] Overview

Like the band's prior EPs and singles, most of the songs on this album are bathed in heavy layers of delay (echo) and reverb, used on both the guitars and the vocals, in order to give a disorientingly psychedelic overall effect.

The lyrics of "Butterfly" [e.g., "You could flap your wings a thousand miles away/ You could take the storm away, forever every day"] pertain directly to the so-called Butterfly effect. (The song "Catching The Butterfly," from the band's 1997 album Urban Hymns, is apparently a continuation of this theme.) McCabe has stated that it was recorded at 3 AM while playing along with a Steely Dan sample ([1]).

The album's closing song is built on a subdued piano motif played by guitarist Nick McCabe.

Like all of the band's releases, A Storm in Heaven features enigmatic artwork. The album's cover photo was shot inside Thor's Cave in Staffordshire, England. The vinyl LP version came in gatefold packaging.

After this album, the band's music moved in a less psychedelic, more structured direction, and their name was officially changed to "The Verve" for legal reasons, so as not to clash with the record label Verve Records.

In a reappraisal of the album's historic importance, Delusions of Adequacy noted that A Storm in Heaven transcended the other albums of its time:

"A highly burnished synthesis of the warbling hard rock of the Doors, the infinite rhythmic groove of Can, the space-fried improvisations of Yeti-era Amon Düül II, and the effects-pedal anchor of My Bloody Valentine, A Storm in Heaven may well have been the best neo-psychedelic album released in the 1990s. While often clumped together with the other English bands leading the shoegaze movement during the same time period, the Verve was creating a far different version of the thick atmospherics the genre became known for. Despite some minor cosmetic similarities, Loveless this was not. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that guitarist Nick McCabe gazed shoe-ward with far better results than Kevin Shields ever did. While Loveless remained firmly anchored to the early-90s British scene, A Storm in Heaven flew figure eights somewhere over its head."

[edit] Track listing

A Northern Soul is the second studio album by English alternative rock band The Verve. The album was released in the United States on 20 June 1995 on the Hut label and in the United Kingdom on 3 July 1995 on Vernon Yard Records. The title is a reference to Northern Soul, a popular soul movement in Britain during the 1960s.

Contents

• 1 Background
• 2 Recording
• 3 Music
• 4 Release, Reception & Legacy
• 5 Track listing
• 6 B-sides
• 7 Personnel
• 8 References
• 9 External links

[edit] Background

Following their performance at Lollapalooza in 1994,[1] The Verve returned to their Wigan-based practice room to begin writing and recording songs for their second studio album.[2] Commenting on the effect that working in the "dank rehearsal room" had on the band's songwriting process, frontman Richard Ashcroft stated:[2]

Initially, the band tried to record the LP inside the rehearsal room itself, so that "they could record as they had been rehearsing", but, when this approach proved to be impossible, they relocated the recording sessions to rural Wales with producer Owen Morris.[2] Tom Hiney, writing for The Guardian in September 1997, claimed that the band's experience of recording during this period was "intense and morose, but it produced an album that will still be listened to in 30 years' time."[2]

[edit] Recording

After encountering difficulties during the recording of their debut album, the band decided to take a more focused approach to the recording of A Northern Soul, with bassist Simon Jones stating, "I was like, 'I'm not going through that again. We are writing these songs before we even step through the doors.'"[3] Guitarist Nick McCabe took a positive view of the early stages of the recording sessions for the album, stating: "when we went in we had no preconceived notion of what it was going to sound like. We just went in and played...and that's when you know you're playing really well, when you don't have to think about it. There were three weeks during the making of that record which I'd have to say were the best I've ever had in my life."[4] However, the sessions soon became infamous for several incidents, with vocalist Richard Ashcroft describing the experience as "insane in ways that only good music, bad drugs and mixed emotions can make."[5] These incidents varied in nature, from Ashcroft disappearing for days[6] to producer Owen Morris smashing a window after the recording of "History".[2][7] Morris later recalled: "They did my head in, completely and utterly. There you go. That's life. It's a fantastic album at the end of the day, but it's not a process that I'd ever want to go through again".[8]