The Verve Have Their Heads In The Clouds
From time to time, we like to round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. After the jump, we look at the reactions to the new album by recently reunited Brit-rock standard-bearers The Verve, whose album Forth arrives in American stores today.
• “Like many an English lad before him, [vocalist Richard] Ashcroft puts the sneer into soul; his fine-sandpaper voice tempers the music’s heavenward thrust. It’s satisfying, this blend of the angelic and the blokeish, but on Forth it never feels very urgent or original. If an anthem deficiency is what ails you, this album is a perfectly useful over-the-counter treatment. Just don’t expect the trip to take you anywhere new.” [LAT]
• “You get the impression that, for [guitarist Nick] McCabe, life in the Verve has been one long battle with Ashcroft’s ego. Rumours already abound that he will be leaving the band again before long. But it’s McCabe’s self-possessed musicianship that makes Forth worth hearing. He is consumed by the alchemist’s belief that such base materials as guitars and amps can be transformed into gold. Sometimes he fails. But when he succeeds, it’s sublime.” [Guardian]
• “While many bands who reunite years after they parted can’t find the old thread, or can’t advance it, the Verve has taken their core character and moved it a bracing step ahead.” [NYDN]
• “But ‘Appalachian Springs’ gives the best afterglow. Built on the ballad-prayer model of ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’ (on 1997’s Urban Hymns) and coated in McCabe’s melting guitars and Ashcroft’s higher-than-you bleating, it is Forth‘s final trackk–and most complete trip.” [RS]
