About Me
"I can't stand biographies. Most of them are just bollocks, aren't they? I'd like a biog that just has a list of what I've done and a few quotes. As little soapy bullshit as possible please. That would be top. Thanks." Richard Ashcroft, November 2005
Well, you heard the man, so let's keep this simple. 'Keys To The World' is Richard Ashcroft's third solo album, following July 2000's 'Alone With Everybody' and November 2002's 'Human Conditions'. He wrote its ten songs (which last 44 minutes) over a number of years, but recorded most of them over a few days in Richmond, West London.In the gap since his last release, Ashcroft and his wife Kate had a second child. Ashcroft also signed to Parlophone following the disintegration of Hut, the label he'd been with since making his recording debut in 1992. That was as the wired, shamanic frontman with Verve, a psychedelic rock band he'd formed with three mates at Winstanley College in Wigan. The band eventually changed their name to The Verve and, in 1997, released their third album 'Urban Hymns', which spawned a clutch of global hits (notably 'Bittersweet Symphony' and 'The Drugs Don't Work'), sold seven million copies and, no bullshit, defined an era.But we digress. What else happened in those three years that Richard Ashcroft's been away? Well, although he's a Manchester United fan, Ashcroft watched with immense pleasure as his hometown club Wigan Athletic, with whom he played as a junior, have risen to Premiership prominence. But he's also watched with enormous displeasure as politicians have spun out of control, wars have been waged, terrorists have terrorised and a depressed apathy has settled on the world. "We're in a malaise," he says. "What do people really believe in any more apart from sport and music?"Ashcroft believes in music more than most. "You can radically change a person's life with a tune. I don't think people truly understand or appreciate how powerful that is.""I think I was born to be a songwriter," he continues. "I'm not driven by fame or success. I'm quite a shy, introverted person and I could easily melt away into the background. But I am driven to write tunes. Creativity for me is almost like therapy, my songs take you into the underbelly of my mind and there's some dark stuff in there. If I lived in LA, I'd be seeing someone three times a day, every day. But I'm a northern Englishman dealing with his shit in his own way."On 'Keys To The World', Ashcroft addresses the subjects he's been pondering and wrestling: depression and happiness, religion and death, the world and its people, love and how to maintain it. It's an album that's in turn thoughtful, downbeat, gentle, angry and optimistic. "In the mid-60s, songwriters were influenced by Dylan and had a more sardonic, twisted take on things. But they still wrote tunes that stuck in people's heads. That's what I'm aiming to do. Melody is still the number one thing for me."Handily, melody is also something Ashcroft's very good at. "I write tunes imagining all kinds of people being able to listen to them, he says. Whether they're into hip hop, soul, blues or jazz. My music is a real thick stew that takes from so many places."And so it is. While the rasping, soulful voice on 'Keys To The World' is unmistakably Ashcroft, the music, always hooky, always melodic, ranges from the raw rock stomp of opener 'Why Not Nothing?' and the harpsichord swagger of first single 'Break The Night With Colour' to the Curtis Mayfield-sampling swing of 'Music Is Power', the muscular groove of 'Keys To The World' and the Dylan-esque chime of 'World Keeps Turning'.At Live 8, by way of introducing Richard Ashcroft, Coldplay frontman Chris Martin described The Verve's 'Bittersweet Symphony' as "the best song ever written, sung by the best singer in the world." That was probably a little soapy for Ashcroft's taste, but 'Keys To The World' proves, perhaps more than any of his solo work to date, that those rare talents continue to burn inside him."I think it's more melodic, the vocals are more to the fore and it's more concise in its points," says Ashcroft when pushed about the differences between this and his last album. "I'm pleased with it. Y'know, I feel like now's the right time to return. As long as we can all survive the bird flu, then 2006's shaping up to be a good year."
