Richard Ashcroft, Roundhouse, gig review: 'A hit and miss collection' from star who compared himself to Jesus

To see Richard Ashcroft in full flow last Monday night is to feel like the last 10 years never happened. Since his last solo album a decade ago, he has endured personal issues as well as The Verve’s messy third break up (which followed their even messier fourth album), and a disastrous foray into rock/rap with his project, RPA and The United Nations of Sound. Subsequently, Ashcroft has been underground since 2010.

Yet as you’d expect from a man who has compared himself to Jesus and once told a journalist he could fly, in his mind’s eye he is still not only the best songwriter but the biggest: it’s just the gigs that got smaller. As he takes to the stage in front of a sold out Roundhouse in blue suit and waistcoat with gas mask hanging around his neck, you could power the national grid with the unswerving, heart-on-sleeve conviction with which he delivers a hit and miss collection of solo work and classics from his former band.

Once dubiously tagged “Mad Richard” for his eccentric behaviour as The Verve went from damaged psych-dreamers to the biggest band in Britain, there are echoes of that persona tonight: straddling the line between showman and shaman, he is a messianic presence preaching his gospel. During the impressive, extended wig-out of “Break the Night with Colour”, he is so consumed he takes to his knees, thrashing his guitar with his sunglasses.

Tonight showcases forthcoming new album These People, a record that has been talked up in Ashcroft’s customary style with interviews placing the record in context to the war in Syria and Arab Spring uprising. He’d probably try to convince you there was philosophical meaning in his gas bill, but as usual his rhetoric claims a profundity that simply doesn’t exist, clunky cliché’s at the expense of true insight. Little has changed musically, either, with the overwrought, string-heavy balladry that has come to define his output all too evident. Opener “Out of my Body” is as promising as it gets: with a verse reminiscent of Lee Hazlewood’s cowboy psychedelia, it ends with a crescendo of dramatic strings, Ashcroft posing Christ-like in the middle of it all. Elsewhere, no amount of charisma will make the country-tinged “They Don’t Own Me” and title track anything other than unremarkable, no matter how untainted his voice remains.

The true magic is found in the smattering of The Verve songs: “Sonnet”, “Lucky Man”, “Bittersweet Symphony” and a solo, goose bumps-inducing “The Drugs Don’t Work”, harking back to a time when Ashcroft’s everyman touch aligned with the masses. “When we meet again it’ll be in a huge place with everyone singing 'These People'", he says, clearly believing he’ll get there again.