AWmusic

Coming on like a Led Zeppelin influenced rock school stipulation (with Portishead’s Third) on naming this year’s albums after their sequential number, the cleverly titled Forth suggests, as the word signifies, that the music on The Verve’s fourth album moves the sound of the band forward, with some momentum, from the their last, the over a decade old Urban Hymns. But instead of thrusting experimental jams full of the soaring psychedelic guitar and songs swelling with epic grandeur, as was anticipated in some quarters, Forth is full of underwhelming soft rock balladry delivered in a measured mid-tempo, meant for and made by the middle-aged. This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if The Verve didn’t have more than the commercial and watered-down (in places) Urban Hymns under their belts and the band also didn’t have the gifted “one man Pink Floyd” guitarist, Nick McCabe.
Sure, The Verve have meandered and produced many elongated anthems before, but somehow, this time round, the protracted paeans of Richard Ashcroft and company have substituted the epic for a platform of plodding epic reflection.
It doesn’t help that Ashcroft’s lyrics with their meaningless existential generalities do little to give some weight of significance to the songs or that Nick McCabe’s sonic palette seems muted and held back by a production mix that reduces what is often the most interesting sound coming out of The Verve to the sound of distant and pretty echoes. Although, when Mcabe’s trippy chromatic guitar does swoop upfront into the mix (like in the ending coda of “Judas”) it can effectively save a song from being just another tepid mood piece propping up a potpourri of awkward lyrics. Likewise, the dub arrangement of “Numbness” creates an adequate amount of space for the band to hint at its instrumental abilities and “Noise Epic” kicks some much needed energy into the album, in the reminiscent velocity of The Verve’s former freak-out-jams. So all doesn’t seem to be lost.
But these rare moments of instrumental transcendence are fleeting when the majority of what constitutes this album is cleanly-produced, content-free and remarkably characterless, it’s almost as if Forth’s diluted soundscapes are documenting the disintegration of a once powerful ensemble as it dribbles out of focus. It’s probably best to listen to Forth without too many expectations, it contains a band blunted by Ashcroft’s lyrical follies and the efforts of a group reduced to producing an assortment of attractive but ultimately unexciting background noises in an attempt to animate its singer’s abilities, beyond the deadening downward spiral of a solo career. For all the signification of its numeral significance, Forth’s shallow and colourless bluster illustrates that (for some) a decade between albums can be too long.

The Verve – Judas
The Verve – Noise Epic

Tags: album