Richard Ashcroft – Brixton Academy
Great show from Richard Ashcroft at Brixton Academy tonight. Although supporting his fairly recently released third solo album ‘Keys To The World’ – he wasn’t stingy on mining the back catalogue – so we were treated to no less than five songs from the seminal final Verve album ‘Urban Hymns’.
An interesting back set-up – guitar, bass, drums, two keyboardists, an occasional backing vocalist, and saxophone/flute player!
The title track to ‘Keys To The World’ kicked sings off, but by the second song he was already digging deep for ‘Urban Hymns’ “Sonnet”. “Why Not Nothing”, probably my favourite song on the new album, makes the best use of the full-time sax-player.
With such a rich vein of Verve material, I tend to forget about the many great solo singles Richard has released – so it was a treat to hear “Science Of Silence”, and a long drawn out “New York” (although I could have done without the free-form cacophony it devolved into partway through).
That said – I’m a sucker for The Verve classics and with a sold-out Brixton Academy singing along to “Lucky Man” and “The Drugs Don’t Work” – it’s hard not to get caught up in things. “Lucky Man” in particular had impressive stage lighting – using a low seated giant mirror ball – to cast what appeared like little bubbles of light around the room, giving a kind of underwater effect.
The main set closed with lead-off single from the new album “Break The Night With Colour” – before Ashcroft appeared solo for a couple of acoustic songs to kick off the encore. The Verve’s “Space and Time” was another big crowd sing-along, but I thought the solo acoustic version of his debut solo single “A Song For The Lovers” was one of the highlights of the night in the stripped back arrangement.
A strange-karaoke style version of UNKLEs “Lonely Soul” was next with Ashcroft singing over a pre-recorded backing track. I love this song, and I’m always happy to encourage set list including unusual covers and side-project material – but this one didn’t really work for me. It just seemed kind of empty – given the backing track didn’t seem to include much a band with two keyboardists couldn’t accomplish.
Still – all was forgotten when Ashcroft introduced a show closing “Bittersweet Symphony” with the repeated mantra “where there’s hits there’s writs”. The band played a true to original version – although Ashcroft did manage to slip a few lines from Sly and The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”. As Ashcroft described the some himself “a classic”.
PS - thanks to www.ashcroftunofficial.co.uk for the live pic from Kings College Dec 2005.
An interesting back set-up – guitar, bass, drums, two keyboardists, an occasional backing vocalist, and saxophone/flute player!
The title track to ‘Keys To The World’ kicked sings off, but by the second song he was already digging deep for ‘Urban Hymns’ “Sonnet”. “Why Not Nothing”, probably my favourite song on the new album, makes the best use of the full-time sax-player.
With such a rich vein of Verve material, I tend to forget about the many great solo singles Richard has released – so it was a treat to hear “Science Of Silence”, and a long drawn out “New York” (although I could have done without the free-form cacophony it devolved into partway through).
That said – I’m a sucker for The Verve classics and with a sold-out Brixton Academy singing along to “Lucky Man” and “The Drugs Don’t Work” – it’s hard not to get caught up in things. “Lucky Man” in particular had impressive stage lighting – using a low seated giant mirror ball – to cast what appeared like little bubbles of light around the room, giving a kind of underwater effect.
The main set closed with lead-off single from the new album “Break The Night With Colour” – before Ashcroft appeared solo for a couple of acoustic songs to kick off the encore. The Verve’s “Space and Time” was another big crowd sing-along, but I thought the solo acoustic version of his debut solo single “A Song For The Lovers” was one of the highlights of the night in the stripped back arrangement.
A strange-karaoke style version of UNKLEs “Lonely Soul” was next with Ashcroft singing over a pre-recorded backing track. I love this song, and I’m always happy to encourage set list including unusual covers and side-project material – but this one didn’t really work for me. It just seemed kind of empty – given the backing track didn’t seem to include much a band with two keyboardists couldn’t accomplish.
Still – all was forgotten when Ashcroft introduced a show closing “Bittersweet Symphony” with the repeated mantra “where there’s hits there’s writs”. The band played a true to original version – although Ashcroft did manage to slip a few lines from Sly and The Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)”. As Ashcroft described the some himself “a classic”.
PS - thanks to www.ashcroftunofficial.co.uk for the live pic from Kings College Dec 2005.
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