Verve: S/D ?

this is awful. i'll probably buy the album anyway, completist that i am.

"Love Is Pain" more like "'Love Is Pain' Is Pain" amirite

Uh Oh. Well then, so much for that. I literally don't think I could have imagined it being worse. And this after "Sit and Wonder" not completely sucking? It really is just comically bad.

http://classic.excellentonline.com/article.php3?story_id=785

the song is OK, hope for a good album from these guys. so yeah put me in the camp that is looking forward to hearing some new stuff from one of the best live acts i have ever seen.

There's a tune, called Mover, available as a free download from their website this week.

http://www.theverve.tv/

so much better than "Love is Crap" - but it's not on the album.

i listened to 'love is noise' for the first time not five minutes ago and can't remember how it goes.

I'm getting many lols from the tracklisting for 'Forth'...

1. "Sit and Wonder"
2. "Love is Noise"
3. "Rather Be"
4. "Judas"
5. "Numbness"
6. "I See Houses"
7. "Noise Epic"
8. "Valium Skies"
9. "Columbo"
10. "Appalachian Springs"

Ah, so Mover IS a b-side - it sounds like one. Shame.

Verve b-sides search & destroy?

Back On My Feet Again
One Way To Go
Let The Damage Begin
Three Steps
Echo Bass
Man Called Sun
Twilight
Country Song
Monkey Magic (Brainstorm Remix)

Destroy = the bollocks country ones from Urban Hymns-era singles that don't have elastic grooves and pyrokinetic guitars.

Does Louis lie Verve b-sides?

I've got no love for the Verve but the single sounded absurdly good at Glastonbury - much ravier, the sample really prominent - a Jacques Lu Cont remix waiting to happen.

The sample's part of the thing that really grates on the recorded version, for me; I'll admit that a much ravier take on the tune would be good, though. From streaming the Myspace version there seems to be a lot of interesting keyboard / electronic stuff going on in the periphery which might redeem it; low bitrate versions are only going to accentuate that sample in nasty ways.

thanks for that link, i like Verve B-sides.

Yeah, at the Las Vegas show "Love Is Noise" sounded like straight-up New Order with McCabe going nuts on it. Some remixes of this could be terrific.

Mover's an ancient song I think? From '93 maybe?

didnt know that:
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=33:wxftxz8aldse

And an album cover...

http://www.spin.com/sites/spin.com/files/imagecache/huge_page_view/sites/spin.com/files/080702_verve_art.jpg

Whaddaya know, a storm in heaven.

i'm so bored of this "naming albums after the number of albums the band have made only not quite huhuh" shit :-(

? are there a rash of these album titles that I don't know about?

xxpost Ned i dunno, looks like pretty clear skies to me. 10% chance of rain, maybe?

I've seen the storm in heaven from both sides now.

"Fourth" is a number. "Forth" is a direction.

I like how it tries to look important. I'm glad someone is still doing this.

So, hey, I'm watching their Glastonbury set on BBC3 at the moment. This is some of the worst fucking music I've heard in years.

You never really give psychedelic music much shrift, do you? :P

Although fair enough in this instance; I've heard from numerous sources that they were totally wretched.

i'm so not hearing this, hanging on to the past.

i so want Verve back, maybe now they are just the Verve, a new band...

Saw a bit of their T in the Park set on the telly last night. Richard Ashcroft appears to have turned into Andy Murray. They weren't very good.

wow that single is an abomination. who thought this was a good idea again?

Well, now we have a video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmRJo8RQ5sA

Huh.

Don't know how long this is going to stay around on the BBC site, but the Maida Vale session video is pretty great... http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/zanelowe/

THANKS!

the first song "Sit and Wonder" reminded me of A Storm In Heaven and finally made me excited about new stuff from these guys.

Then they go and play Sonnet, which is still rank, and then they do a new song called rather Be that might as well be Ashcroft solo with McCabe doing tame widdles on top.

Also, just look at the gut on Sobbo.

To be fair, the ashcroft solo and tame widdles was the case in 1995... I see the door, on your own etc. I actually like this, in that I like the mix. It's just an entire record of it that's unbearable. Still looking forward to seeing what the new one's like.

So now it's out on CD, what are people thinking?

Packaging seems unnecessarily cheap. Totally unsurprised at which songs are credited to Ashcroft rather than The Verve. Amused that Simon Jones thanks the management company "for making this happen".

Improved sound quality over the MP3s. It's a very trebly mix though, not enough emphasis on Jones and Salisbury. That's always been a problem though. Which is odd cos there's not masses of McCabe either, actually. Maybe there is and he's just doing different things, working in a different range to previously.

As before, bits are amazing, and bits are just... weak.

On headphones, McCabe is doing some awesome shit on Noise Epic. Ashcroft, sadly, is impersonating Bono at the end of Bullet The Blue Sky.

I need to get this. (I keep forgetting, which is perhaps not a good thing.)

Some months old but Nick speaks (and speaks):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDXgTTtahww&feature=related

As my friend stripey said, "funny how they couldn't get the guy to speak for nearly ten years, and now they can't get him to stop ..."

On the whole, I think it's really good. Agree about the mix, though. I guess I thought Urban Hymns was mostly shit (I really only listen to the b-sides from that time), and this is better than that was, so I'm pretty happy with it. I do think it's quite brave to not come back with Urban Hymns 2, as I think that's probably what I expected.

Picking this up tomorrow. Full report to follow

Tellingly, I felt like a dickhead buying it in HMV yesterday morning; they were playing it in the shop, and all the music is now upstairs but this, obviously, was on a display near the door. I just felt like a football hooligan or something, or a middle-management twat, with my Sainsburys bag with bagels and chorizo in, trying to relive my late teens by buying the new album by The Verve. Very odd feeling.

Check the vodcast thingy ('the culture minute') here - which totally misses the point of what prety much everyone on ILM who likes The Verve likes ABOUT The Verve.

haha nick an old homie -- now a young professional in his suit and tie -- of mine emailed to say pretty much that: bought the verve album, felt like an old twat, and it was rubbish.

The trendy emo teen serving didn't help.

Here's the missing link from my last post - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2008/08/23/bmpopcdwk123.xml

Torygraph to be shot for stupid plinky plonky musick when you go on their website even though it's probably better than the 1975-style progressive rock of the new Verve album.

The Verve have always had a taste for the woozy rock jam. Their debut album, 1993's A Storm in Heaven, was a stew of guitar solos; their second, 1995's A Northern Soul, was more tuneful, but still driftingly overlong. It was only when they learnt to shape a song, giving it a cleanly defined verse-chorus structure and cutting the instrumental rambling, that they became popular.

Geir writes for the torygraph now?