The Verve — Forth

The announcement that The Verve were reuniting was a very happy day for folks who spent the early '90s listening to records that sounded like the whirring of vacuum cleaners. Those were buzzy times, and Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft was amongst the scene's leaders. That was until guitarist Nick McCabe punched him in the face in early '99, essentially breaking up the band and leading Ashcroft to put out a bunch of crappy adult-contemporary records. Sadly, The Verve who soared to technicolour highs and revelled in dark lows back then aren't this reconciled Verve that seem more content to wade through a far more pabulum-y musical place. "Sit And Wonder" starts the album with promise and spirit, but first single "Love Is Noise" is close enough to late-period Duran Duran that you want to forcibly ram some drugs down Ashcroft's throat while simultaneously poking him in the eye. "Numbness" is a slow hypnotizer that works, the spoken-word "Noise Epic" survives where it could've been Doors-gone-wrong, and "Appalachian Springs" is the sort of gauzy, superior ballad that could have fit on Urban Hymns. Beyond that, though, there's a whole lot of super-wussy prostrating for radio stations, romantic comedy music supervisors and whoever else are the secret powers of tepid musicland. Basically, for a comeback record, this is epic fail.