Hearing "On Your Own" by the Verve on satellite radio, it flashed on me that the British group, the Verve, ended up in a very interesting place on their last record, Urban Hymns (1997), achieving a remarkable blend of indie rock and early seventies mellow soul. You can hear the transition in "On Your Own" from Northern Songs (1995); I hear Curtis Mayfield in the resigned lyric, the melancholy vocal, and above all, in that silky-smooth groove that you want to go on endlessly. Unlike so many of the countless other attempts by white rock bands to do something soulful, it doesn't seem self-conscious at all.   

In the same vein, from Urban Hymns: 

Not that I don't equally admire the style of the early Verve, and their mash-up of U2 (U2 trying to sound like Zeppelin that is, i.e., "Bullet the Blue Sky) and Can. It's just that I don't feel the mellower Verve is any less powerful.