Alone With Everybody is a good album with great moments. Expert arrangements featuring strings, horns, choir and steel guitar replace the Verve's amplified swell with the gentler expanses of contentment. "You on My Mind When I Sleep" is a guitar-flecked symphony of tenderness that raises the bar on the love song. Ashcroft's mood spaces get more satisfying, however, when the adoration gets mild doses of reality check. "I Get My Beat" speaks of a durable love that outshines the "game we're playing." Its melancholy beauty hits a stride that's at once lazy and dramatic, as it weaves a shifting procession of strings, flutes, soulful vocal layers and the author's own varied guitar work. The similarly styled "Brave New World" finds Ashcroft hoping to see his love on the "other side," a place where he also hopes to be in better shape. The problems arise when bouncing tempos and pop-psych positivity edge out the mystery and swagger we've come to expect from the guy. The single "A Song for the Lovers" sets the stage for brooding, but counters with synthetic handclaps and a rigid beat that tries to drag the symphony onto the dance floor. The toe-tapper "C'mon People (We're Making It Now)" is as perky as its title suggests, bobbing along like a theme song for a motivational seminar as Ashcroft declares, "I feel fine now."

Feeling fine is as double-edged a sword as emerging from the ashes of a band like The Verve. The demise of both personal chaos and a brilliantly ragged rock outfit within a few short years does plenty to explain Alone With Everybody's move to the suburbs. No one wants to see Ashcroft return to his emotional squat, but we can still admire what he did to dress up those barren walls. Nostalgia is only as rich as today is poor, and with an album that many a pop star would give his summer home to have made, Richard Ashcroft is still the envy of the neighborhood.