Richard Ashcroft: Human Conditions : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

"I cheated on my metaphysics exam," goes an old Woody Allen joke. "I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me." Human Conditions, the second album from the soul-baring solo career of the Verve's former leader, offers assistance in taking life's tests -- providing you don't find metaphysically minded rock stars a bit funny to begin with. The album contains only one real rocker, the tabla-dappled "Bright Lights" (close kin to the Black Crowes' "Sting Me"), but Ashcroft's mastery of balladry makes "Buy It in Bottles" his best since the Verve's "Lucky Man." And on the gospel-tinged "Man on a Mission," he croons a cutting couplet: "A fortune has been made on all the illness they made/And then we've got to pay for the drugs to take it away." Which is no joke.

PETER RELIC
(From RS 917, March 6, 2003)