These People by Richard Ashcroft. Courtesy Cooking Vinyl
These People by Richard Ashcroft. Courtesy Cooking Vinyl

Album review: Richard Ashcroft’s These People offers a dose of nostalgia, paired with a sprinkling of fresher sounds

The Verve’s former frontman (the band split in 2010) presents a work that is both referential and progressive.

Nick March
Nick March

25 July, 2016

These People

Richard Ashcroft

(Cooking Vinyl)

Three stars

Richard Ashcroft returns with These People, his fifth solo album and his first for six years. The Verve's former frontman (the band split in 2010) presents a work that is both referential and progressive.

The title track appears to recapture the sonic architecture and post-party melancholia of his most productive Britpop years, while other tracks – including Ain't the Future So Bright – highlight the promise of a new direction.

But it is in the tracks that fuse the past and the present where These People begins to impose itself. Out of My Body is driven along by all manner of keyboards, synths and electronic ­flirtation, while They Don't Own Me is a seeming ­reimagining of The Verve's 1997 classic Lucky Man.

Ashcroft’s everyman sentiments and his quirky cultural references may grate with some – “Don’t go looking for your Watergate,” he sings on the album’s opener – but his songwriting powers seem undimmed by the passage of time.

If you fancy a dose of nostalgia, paired with a sprinkling of fresher sounds, then These People is well worth a punt.

nmarch@thenational.ae

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Email sent to Uber team from chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi

From: Dara

To: Team@

Date: March 25, 2019 at 11:45pm PT

Subj: Accelerating in the Middle East

Five years ago, Uber launched in the Middle East. It was the start of an incredible journey, with millions of riders and drivers finding new ways to move and work in a dynamic region that’s become so important to Uber. Now Pakistan is one of our fastest-growing markets in the world, women are driving with Uber across Saudi Arabia, and we chose Cairo to launch our first Uber Bus product late last year.

Today we are taking the next step in this journey—well, it’s more like a leap, and a big one: in a few minutes, we’ll announce that we’ve agreed to acquire Careem. Importantly, we intend to operate Careem independently, under the leadership of co-founder and current CEO Mudassir Sheikha. I’ve gotten to know both co-founders, Mudassir and Magnus Olsson, and what they have built is truly extraordinary. They are first-class entrepreneurs who share our platform vision and, like us, have launched a wide range of products—from digital payments to food delivery—to serve consumers.

I expect many of you will ask how we arrived at this structure, meaning allowing Careem to maintain an independent brand and operate separately. After careful consideration, we decided that this framework has the advantage of letting us build new products and try new ideas across not one, but two, strong brands, with strong operators within each. Over time, by integrating parts of our networks, we can operate more efficiently, achieve even lower wait times, expand new products like high-capacity vehicles and payments, and quicken the already remarkable pace of innovation in the region.

This acquisition is subject to regulatory approval in various countries, which we don’t expect before Q1 2020. Until then, nothing changes. And since both companies will continue to largely operate separately after the acquisition, very little will change in either teams’ day-to-day operations post-close. Today’s news is a testament to the incredible business our team has worked so hard to build.

It’s a great day for the Middle East, for the region’s thriving tech sector, for Careem, and for Uber.

Uber on,

Dara

Seemar’s top six for the Dubai World Cup Carnival:

1. Reynaldothewizard
2. North America
3. Raven’s Corner
4. Hawkesbury
5. New Maharajah
6. Secret Ambition

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