Last week, V-Shop ran an advertising campaign promoting new singles. The sleeves were pictured alongside large quotes. Most of these were glowing recommendations from critics. Except one. Above the sleeve of Richard Ashcroft's current single, Check the Meaning, were the words: "The captain is back." The quote came not from a reviewer, but from Ashcroft himself, heralding his own return in his usual retiring style. The former Verve singer is not, you may note, big on humility.
This fact is continually underlined by his second solo album, which takes itself very seriously indeed. Like everything Ashcroft has produced since the Verve's breakthrough 1997 album Urban Hymns, it has a weighty title, weighty orchestrations and weighty lyrics. It also has a weighty special guest, Brian Wilson. The only thing that isn't weighty about the album is Ashcroft himself, who still looks like a quizzical insect wearing sunglasses.
Beyond his penchant for orchestral heraldry and epic pretensions, however, Ashcroft has evinced a career-long interest in stating the blindingly obvious. The Verve even had a song called This Is Music, a handy pointer for anyone who thought the Verve were a crown green bowling team. Ashcroft's greatest skill may be wrapping pub philosophies - "you're a slave to money then you die", "it's a crazy world" - in music portentous enough to convince people they are hearing a sage's arcane wisdom.
Even by Ashcroft's standards, Human Conditions is big on self-important bluster. From its condescending title downwards, it is hard to think of a song more pompous than opening track Check the Meaning. Brass fanfares and skirling strings back Ashcroft's voice. "Can you hear what I'm sayin'?" he repeatedly demands. His exasperated tone suggests he is trying to explain the intricacies of Kant's Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic of Morals. What he's sayin' turns out to be considerably less complex: "Got my mind meditatin' on love." There's obviously nothing wrong with this as a topic, but Ashcroft carries on as if he were the first person in history to write a song about love. Extensive research suggests this is not actually the case.
Much of Human Conditions finds Ashcroft grappling with bulky issues. On Science of Silence, for example, he has worked out that God may not exist and that space is really big. These issues are expressed either in cliches - "We're on a rock, spinning silently" - or impenetrable signifiers. "When you're running on your own, you know you ain't like a rolling stone," suggests Man on a Mission, "because a stone will find its place and when you hear this space, just crawl and never run." Exactly what mission he's on remains a mystery, but it clearly involves a rhyming dictionary.
Annoyingly, when Ashcroft lays off the cod-mysticism, he is capable of writing touching lyrics. Paradise, about his young son, is direct and moving. His problem is summarised by the refrain of Buy It in Bottles: "I know it all so very well." At least, he thinks he does.
Not only the lyrics fall flat. Ashcroft is a member of Noel Gallagher's Campaign for Real Rock, a sort of musical Flat Earth Society formed to protect the British public from manufactured pop and nu-metal and propagate the nebulous concepts of "being real" and "proper songs".
Yet on Human Conditions, Ashcroft's own songwriting seems slender. Its currency is largely saccharine country rock. These are not songs of the verse-chorus variety, but simple chord sequences endlessly repeated and overinflated.
The listener usually gets the idea within the first 90 seconds. Most of the tracks last around six minutes. This gives Ashcroft ample time to indulge in ad-libbing, a pastime of which he seems inordinately fond. Mostly, he kills time with multitudinous yeahs and all right nows, which is merely tedious.
Occasionally, he offers a spoken-word monologue, which makes you sob for mercy. On Check the Meaning, we find Ashcroft solemnly mumbling: "When the city sleeps, we go walking, we find a hole in the sky, and we start talking, and we say Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ!" As the song passes the eight-minute mark, the listeners, too, may find themselves saying "Jesus Christ!" with considerable force.
There is nothing tentative or exploratory here. Ashcroft emerges from Human Conditions unshakeably convinced of his own genius. Plenty of people seem to agree with him. His solo debut, Alone With Everybody, topped the album chart, despite reviews thatdescribed the songs as unmemorable and too long and the lyrics as rubbish.
Ashcroft wants to make epic music, to address important topics. On this evidence, he's not very good at it, but you could never accuse him of not trying. And perhaps, for his fans, whether he's good isn't the point. Ashcroft's continued success suggests that in a chart filled with people who aren't trying at all, good intentions stand out, no matter how hubristic the end result.
