The Verve – Forth

by Patrick Gary

Expectations are a funny thing. Sometimes they can lead to pushing someone toward greatness. Other times the expectations lend a sense of entitlement and arrogance: a sense that you cannot fail because everyone around you wants to believe what you're doing is great. With the Verve it could be that they simply began to believe that they could not fail. After all, much like Oasis, they always seemed to feel as if they were the best band in the world. Just not everyone had realized it yet.

And like Hum or The Flaming Lips they were able to produce distinct, fully realized, and truly great albums one after another. The albums may not have been the most radio friendly, but each album was distinctive, powerful, and genuine. In this way The Verve were correct. They had produced such good music so consistently that the arrogance could be justified in some ways. Maybe they really had only good music in them.

So when the band imploded after the success of Urban Hymns it was somewhat myth making. Like The Pixies it seemed that half of the greatness of the band was knowing that somehow, if only they had been able to keep it together, they could have changed the world. They could have been another Radiohead, not needing the radio in order to conquer audiences or play by the rules of the industry in order to have legions of fans singing along with every word of every song at every show every night.

When they reformed they could have proven the myth. After a decade apart there had to be more great music in them; more things to say; more songs to move a man's soul. But perhaps that was simply too much to ask.

If this album had come out in 2000 or 2001 then it would have been welcomed as an answer to Radiohead's Kid A and Amnesiac experiments, showing how the electronica could be blended with the guitars in genre-blending ways that Radiohead themselves would not really master until Hail to the Thief. If it would have waited a year or two longer then it would have been seen as an album that epitomized the sound that Coldplay or Travis were claiming as their own.

Instead, coming out in 2008, it feels like an epilogue, or perhaps a tune-up rather than an essential part of the story. This ground has been covered by The Verve's successors and the contemporaries that continued on. It is Urban Hymns with less sharpness and fewer risks. As such, it's a good album but not the one that you believed The Verve had in them. It holds up as a good album for night driving or a long introspective night alone. The neo-psychedelic Space Rock still sounds like the same old band. There are even a couple of really good songs on the album. The first 3 songs start to make you believe that this is another one for the ages. Sit and Wonder doesn't exactly slap you across the face so much as sneak up on you, but it showcases a great guitar hook and some of Brit Pop's better vocal stylings. Love is Noise is exactly what the radio needs. It's part U2, part dance pop, and a bit more than puddle-deep. If Coldplay can have a huge hit with Viva la Vida then The Verve can have a huge hit here. Judas also has a welcomely dreamy quality that the band has always been so good at. And then there's the one song that you don't feel like you've heard them write before: I See Houses is more piano hook than anything at the beginning, but still grandiose in the tradition that Verve established for themselves.

But there just aren't enough great moments here. The fans that waited 11 years for this will probably love it, but the rest of the world will just have to wait and see what comes next. If this is just the tune-up that they needed to find their groove again then it will be looked at as a transitional album, or an understandable recapitulation. If this is the last sound that the Verve ever make together it will be a disappointment; a nonessential recapitulation rather than the crescendo toward a magnificent coda.

1    Sit & Wonder
2    Love Is Noise
3    Rather Be
4    Judas
5    Numbness
6    I See Houses
7    Noise Epic
8    Valium Skies
9    Mama Soul
10   Appalachian Springs

OnYourOwn Records VER01 [64:22]
Released August 26, 2008