The Verve - Star Sail

The first song on the first album by The Verve, aptly titled A Storm in Heaven.

Groundbreaking.

From the very first chord—from the very first note of that slowly strummed chord—you know you're in the presence of something new, some unprecedented fusion of shoegazing shimmer and hard-rock muscle.   The monstrous distorted reverb in that gentle chord declares an intent.  It takes a stand.  It makes a promise that any rational person would be skeptical of seeing fulfilled.

And yet, as the song unfolds, the promise gets fulfilled again and again, in ascending stages: first, with the ethereal background vocals at 0:33, then with the jangly, roaring power chords at 0:57 that announce the real start of the song.  And against all odds it turns out to be worthy of its own prelude.

Richard's Ashcroft's vocals—it could have been a disaster with a different singer, or a different engineer—somehow blend in seamlessly, like another instrument, while still conveying meaning, albeit rather nebulous.  But nebulous is just right for this kind of music.

Surely the coup de grace comes when Nick McCabe—who has already paralyzed and anesthetized us with his haunting, echoing guitar—launches into the goosebump-inducing Interstellar Space Drone at 1:34.  McCabe gets my vote for best guitarist of the 90s.

From there, the tsunami just keeps building, stacking wave upon wave, drone upon drone, chord upon reverberated chord...until suddenly, without warning, it's fading gently out...into the first shoegazing song I ever heard, the one that got me hooked....