Human conditions

Description

Few critics will point it out, but the new album by the former singer of The Verve, a dazzling pop band whose history will mainly remember two of its last singles (Bittersweet Symphony and The Drugs Don’t Work), occasionally recalls the works of Roddy Frame, former leader of the now-defunct Aztec Camera and an underrated genius. Like Frame, Ashcroft knows how to maintain his innate talent for well-crafted rhyme and beautifully turned songs. Like Frame, he knows that the guitar counts double and spreads the verses and choruses of this second solo album in the exact line of the previous one, "Alone With Everybody."
Curious and rather fond of collaborations when they lead somewhere, Ashcroft, who has already worked with UNKLE or the Chemical Brothers, has this time been offered nothing less than Brian Wilson. With his velvety highway voice, the original Beach Boy splashes Nature Is The Law and illuminates a record of pop songs built from the inside that flow very English-style. In 2002, Ashcroft lives far from the glitter and stress, withdrawn from the turmoil with wife and child, and reflects long before composing, between two leisurely puffs. Divinely intertwined by Will Malone and produced by his partner Chris Potter, "Human Conditions" testifies to a rather successful return to the essentials.