POPSCREEN: The Verve

Richard Ashcroft must be really picky about the benches he chooses to sit on. In The Verve’s new video for “Rather Be,” there doesn’t seem to be any other explanation for the four minutes the lead singer spends wandering in circles amongst the trees on Gloucestershire’s foggy, barren May Hill. However, once (or if) you get past the repetitive monotony of the video and listen to the song’s lyrics, it becomes a somberly beautiful reflection about the need to tune out our information-heavy world and just be at peace with where you are.

The song is the second single off “Forth,” the band’s first new release since 1997’s “Urban Hymns,” and it seems that they’re up to the same old tricks. In fact, the video is eerily reminiscent of Ashcroft’s lip-synching, determined walk down a busy street in “Bittersweet Symphony,” with one significant difference—there are no other people to be found in “Rather Be,” including the rest of the band.

When viewed as a companion piece to “Bittersweet Symphony,” the nuances of the video are made more apparent. Rather than indifferently shoving past people on the sidewalk, as he does in “Symphony,” the oft-brooding Ashcroft is more pensive, intimate, and mournful as he meanders around the woods. The place he would “rather be” is serene and undisturbed, allowing him to leave behind the “world full of confusion.” Yet there is an underlying sense of desolation and remoteness in the gloomy fog and stark trees. You can only tune out for so long until you become lost and numb.

Directed by Ashcroft himself, the video is neither innovative nor particularly exciting, but its minimalism fits the song’s ideas about appreciating the simple and escaping society’s overwhelming influence.

—Ali R. Leskowitz