Latest CD releases reviewed

THE VERVE
This Is Music: the Singles 92-98/Virgin
*****

The Verve's story is one of missed opportunities and greatness squandered. They had the potential to be one of the biggest bands in the world, but they were their own worst enemy. Spiralling drug habits and clashing, tortured egos saw them frequently implode at the moment they eyed the major prize. That said, this is a truly brilliant collection that covers their career from start to premature finish. It reminds you that, when they were at their best, The Verve were close to untouchable. Ashcroft's harrowing, intense vocal brought majesty and gravitas to The Verve, but it was Nick McCabe's spiralling, hypnotic guitar that added momentum. Forget the two "new" tracks tacked on at the end: This Could Be My Moment and Monte Carlo are both outtakes from Urban Hymns, and sound like they would not even have made Ashcroft's first, disappointing solo album. Enjoy instead 12 songs epic in ambition and scale that make up the only essential greatest hits collection of the Christmas season. www.vmg.co.uk/theverve

Paul McNamee

They were one of the biggest Brit bands of the 1980s, selling millions of albums with such go-getting titles as Pyromania, Hysteria and Adrenalize. Other bands of their ilk fixated on dungeons, dragons and decapitation, but the Sheffield lads got straight down to the nitty-gritty with such innuendo-laden hits as Pour Some Sugar On Me, Let's Get Rocked and Animal. They had it all - stonking drums, ball-busting vocals, face-melting guitars and crotch-grabbing tunes. Their drummer lost an arm in a car crash and their guitarist died of rock 'n' roll overload, but the Lep carried on regardless, although they've never equalled their mid-1980s peak or sustained their cock-rock swagger. This double CD has all the hits, some pretty awful misses, and a slightly misguided version of The Kinks' Waterloo Sunset. www.defleppard.com
Kevin Courtney

EFTERKLANG
Tripper/Leaf

A year in the making, Efterklang's ("after noise", or reverberation in Danish) ironically titled Tripper is a remarkable and ambitious début, not least in its seamless melding of eclectic musical and vocal idioms into a dynamic and evocative soundscape. Combining warm acoustic instrumentation (piano, violin, and trumpet) and roiling studio sounds with elegant melodic lines, sinuous polyrhythms and gorgeous vocals (a sensuous mix of ascending chorale, laconic spoken word and breathy chant), the Copenhagen-based ten-piece inject their uniquely expressive electronica/post-rock fusion with rare emotional force and visceral urgency; Swarming, Prey & Predator and Collecting Shields, in particular, swoop and soar. Lush, dramatic, and intensely lyrical, Tripper burns with a melancholic yearning that belies its cool knowing and aching vulnerability, rendering it utterly beguiling.
www.efterklang.net

Jocelyn Clarke

TRAVIS
Singles/Independiente
**

Once, Travis were a decent if unremarkable indie band with a certain Britpoppy zest. Then singer Fran Healy started writing strummy, Oasis-lite tunes such as Writing To Reach You, Turn and Why Does It Always Rain On Me, and voila! They were huge. Sadly, they took the formula a bit too far, creating the execrable elevator music that was Sing, Side and Flowers In The Window. You can still hear these songs wafting out of the tannoy at supermarkets and convenience stores, not exactly what discerning rock 'n' roll shoppers would have had in mind. They've since tried to claw back some cred via such tunes as Re-Offender and The Beautiful Occupation, but it's too late - Travis sold their souls for a few hits, and they will burn forever in easy-listening hell.
www.travisonline.com
Kevin Courtney

JACKSON BROWNE
The Very Best of Jackson Browne/Electra
***

In his career spanning three decades, Jackson Browne has gone from being the quintessential American west coast introspective singer-songwriter to being an advocate for civil rights and political change. Yet he remains very much the preserve of his own generation. There are essentially three periods to his career and they are well represented on this double CD: the early doom-laden years, which resulted in songs of great resonance and depth such as Before the Deluge, Fountain of Sorrow, Late for the Sky and Everyman along with a clutch of soft-rock gems; the generally dodgy middle years where he struggled manfully to find a voice; and this latest period where he has settled on a mature bridge between the first two, with songs to match. Often wrongly dismissed as boring, this collection proves that Browne's output has been important as a dissident and honest voice of his generation.
www.jacksonbrowne.com
Joe Breen

MARA CARLYLE
The Lovely/Accidental
***

Blending jazz with indie? Mixing torch song with folktronica? Despite the limitations of such hybrid labelling, it seems that Mathew Herbert and Plaid collaborator Mara Carlyle has little else to do but release albums of such lazy bliss as The Lovely before she will be carried aloft, champion-style, and elevated to the status of this year's Norah Jones. But hold it right there, dinner party people: Carlyle is no more a Jones/Melua wannabe than Courtney Love. Yes, subtlety is the name of Carlyle's langorous game, but we're talking serious pleasant surprises here (the saw and the ukelele feature, for instance; Schumann and Mozart are here by implication if nothing else; opening track The Saw Song and closing track For Me bookend songs of gorgeous, plaintive misery) and not standardised jazz/torch settings. Carlyle makes her début Irish solo appearance at Dublin's Crawdaddy venue tomorrow; on the basis of this, her début album, you should get yourself along there.
www.maracarlyle.com
Tony Clayton-Lea