1997 Verve: The Drugs Don't Work

Verve were a Brit band who, although active during the Britpop era, always stood slightly aloof from the party like mature students watching the freshers get up to their antics with a raised eyebrow. In many ways,'The Drugs Don't Work' acts as a fitting comedown, a full stop epitaph for the whole ludicrous era. Which is perhaps too convenient a way of looking at it, but taken directly then 'The Drugs Don't Work' presents me with a dilemma; with a line 'Like a cat in a bag, waiting to drown' at number one, then the latent miserabilist in me should be whooping with joy (if you'll excuse the oxymoron). In its downbeat tone and despairing nature it's a song I should be embracing, but I don't. Not that much anyway. Again, dislike would be far too strong a word - distrust would be a better one, but that's going to take some explaining.

Basically, I don't trust it because, as a whole, I find it too pat and ordered, too neat and polished in a way that belies the end of tether world it's meant to inhabit. In a curious way, its studious polish and shimmer of echoing designer angst reminds me of nothing more than Boyzone's take on 'Words' - that is, an attempt to add emotion by proxy instead of letting the song beneath do the talking. Because it could - 'The Drugs Don't Work' is a highly emotive statement of loss and longing that doesn't need those generic guitar and string embellishments.

For proof of that, look no further than the demo version served up on the B side that bleeds its emotion through a simplicity that does nothing to hold it back. Yet for their definitive statement, Verve offer it up as a coffee table cover version, a weighty tome of high gloss that's there to impress, but with some much bulk then lines like "if heaven calls, I'm coming, too. Just like you said, you leave my life, I'm better off dead" lose their power by simply getting lost along the way. As I've said before, less can often be more and in its attempt to present a grandiose statement of wounded gravitas, 'The Drugs Don't Work' floods the engine. Shame.