Something happens when the Verve are together that none of them
experience when they are apart. Individually, the Verve are all
highly-accomplished players. Singer Richard Ashcroft has been
called the greatest singer in the world by no less a peer than
Coldplay s Chris Martin. Liverpool-born Simon Jones s
dub-informed bass takes the Verve s music far beyond rock and
into space and dub; Peter Salisbury plays drums more like a jazz
great than a conventional rock drummer and when the tag guitarist
of his generation is thrown about it often lands at the feet of
the hugely adventurous, psychedelic, exploratory Nick McCabe.
However, when they are together a chemistry takes hold that
transcends the four people onstage to blast the Verve somewhere
else entirely and this chemistry and spontaneity has survived an
absence of almost a decade. Already, since their typically
unpredictable 2007 reunion, live shows have been running the
gauntlet of everything from material so new that Ashcroft has
been singing the words from scraps of paper to long-lost, hazy
B-sides like Let The Damage Begin and A Man Called Sun, amid all
manner of musical fireworks. When they take the stage, literally
anything can happen.
After an absence of almost a decade, these songs are again being
played, as they should be by the Verve themselves. The individual
members have not been slouches. Richard Ashcroft has enjoyed a
successful and prolific solo career. Simon Jones formed a band,
the Shining, who were not altogether dissimilar to the Verve, and
has played with Damon Albarn s Gorillaz. Nick McCabe has been
remixing and playing with everyone from the Beta Band to John
Martyn while Peter Salisbury has been playing with Ashcroft,
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and has further diverted his musical
obsessions into running a Stockport drum shop. However, all seem
to have realized what their enormous fanbase has been telling
them all along. That today, as much if not more than ever, music
really needs the Verve.
However, a band like the Verve would never settle for easy
nostalgia. Even before they d set out on their initial comeback
gigs last year, which sold out within an astonishing 20 minutes,
they made public (via the NME website) the results of their very
first jam session as a reformed band. The Thaw Sessions comprised
14 wondrous minutes of music, which signified their ability to
spark off one another remained undimmed. Soon afterwards, the
band debuted new song Sit And Wonder a tune trimmed from a
25-minute jam, just as they would in the early days, a taste of
things to come. Those comeback dates proved so successful and
were so enthusiastically received that the band immediately
embarked on a full-scale tour of arenas in December of 2007,
playing bigger gigs in many cases than the first time around. In
2008, they look set to up the ante even further, by appearing at
many of the major festivals and, in a turnaround that would have
seemed unthinkable even a year ago, releasing their
enormously-anticipated fourth album. The results will certainly
be worth the wait. - Dave Simpson.