Richard Ashcroft, who was responsible for three of the best albums of the nineties when he was the face and voice of The Verve, has lost it. His latest album, Human Conditions, is competent yet soppy and unremarkable, and utterly lacking in the bravura of his older work. It made me glad that I bought it for only five under-the-table dollars from a flea market vendor on Avenue A (I also got a cheap copy of Run-DMC’s Greatest Hits).Listening to it made me recall how I read recently that there’s just so much good music out there right now. Is there? Am I just completely missing out on it now? I hope so, I really do hope that I am hopelessly out of touch and that somewhere there’s plenty of good music to be found. Because all I see is a complete paucity of adventurous musicians, and a plethora of consumeristic attitude masquerading as music.
Or, is this what it means to get old and cranky?
+