It isn't often you feel sorry for the money men at major record companies. But imagine, for a moment, their pain. On paper, the United Nations of Sound is a seriously good idea, if a little blustery in the title department.
Former Verve man Richard "RPA" Ashcroft – possessor of soul, and many pairs of quality suede shoes – goes to the States in search of the source (Verve was, of course, an American jazz label). Ker-ching! Recording with top-flight soul session musicians and the hip-hop producer who (allegedly) taught Kanye West to pillage soul samples (Dion Wilson, aka No ID), Ashcroft is reborn, after the Verve reunion failed to stick. Similar reinventions have worked wonders for Damon Albarn and – if we're stretching things – Robert Plant, still happily fiddling with American roots music while Led Zep fans fume.
How did the UN of Sound go so terribly wrong? Instinctually cool, Ashcroft is a borderline mystical figure, effortlessly outclassing his more lumpen peers, the Gallagher brothers. He has bone structure, and a fully operational sense of populist uplift. The United Nations of Sound should have been a lush, stirring work. Instead, it misfires wildly.
Last January's single, "Are You Ready", still has the capacity to stir, especially if you imagine Ashcroft waving his arms like a testifying mantis. But the sharp intakes of breath begin almost immediately with "Born Again". Wikipedia does not record how string arranger Benjamin Wright (who did Michael Jackson's Off the Wall), engineer Reggie "brother of Lamont" Dozier and the various instrumentalists feel about God. But as scene veterans, they might well have wept into the mixing desk, listening to Ashcroft's extended religious metaphors. You would be forgiven for thinking he has actually converted, so profuse are Ashcroft's beatitudes.
These raptures, though, veer from cliche to freshly minted clunker. "I saw Venus up in the sky/I turned down my head and Serena smiled/And I'm born again," he gargles. Ashcroft was already teetering on the edge of a lyrical abyss when he sang, "Will those feet in modern times/Walk on soles that were made in China," on "Love Is Noise", the Verve's single of 2008. Now he's gone in, loafers first.
There is even a song called "Beatitudes", a ghastly extended pun on beat/beatitude in which Ashcroft's half-raps makes even less sense up against Steve Wyreman's wah-wah guitar solos. More sins? "Royal Highness" steals baldly from the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane"; the falsetto on "Life Can Be So Beautiful"; the title of "Life Can Be So Beautiful".
The blues serve Ashcroft a little better. "How Deep Is Your Man" might be a little overcooked musically, but Ashcroft undersings it with a knowing smile in his voice, a quality fatally lacking elsewhere. More of this playfulness would have helped, as well as an honestly searching spirit. Ultimately, the soul men's expensive studio gloss holds Ashcroft back instead of lifting him. What a waste.
