For The Verve, whose finest songs always sounded better outside the context of the albums that contained them, a singles package feels long overdue. Digging out 1997's mostly disappointing swan-song Urban Hymns just for "Bittersweet Symphony" and "Lucky Man" could prove disheartening, but hearing those tracks surrounded by 10 others of equal caliber makes The Verve's lack of massive, continued appeal seem puzzling. As advertised, This Is Music: The Singles 92-98 gathers the group's A-sides, making for a package—available separately as a DVD or CD—that boasts a higher batting average than any of its three studio albums.
Presented in what feels like random order, This Is Music (named after one of the band's most bombastic, delightfully egotistical songs) shows and tells of a drastic evolution. The early years ("Blue," "Gravity Grave") are all shoegazing gauze, with videos to match: The Verve wanders around in slow motion and in vivid color, and not much else happens. Later, The Verve becomes more tightly focused on singer Richard Ashcroft, both musically and visually, and on his more straightforward melancholy anthems: "Bittersweet Symphony," the collection's final track and the band's only real U.S. hit, finds Ashcroft strutting a busy street alone, bumping into passersby while lip-synching to a song that features little more than his voice and a symphonic sample. It was a strange, sometimes jarring jump from swirling walls of sound to concise, often brilliant pop, but This Is Music makes sense of the progression, leaving the diversions and meanderings behind in favor of a simple, straightforward collection of markedly different but uniformly intriguing songs.