By: David Schultz

The perfect album can be a blessing as much as it can be a curse. With Urban Hymns, The Verve created a soundtrack forever associated with the late-Nineties boom period of British psychedelic pop. In doing so, they tapped into a deep well of creativity and ran it dry. Urban Hymns was such a masterwork that The Verve were never able and probably not destined to ever follow it up. It is The Verve’s legacy that they will mostly be remembered for one amazing album whose success they were never able to duplicate. Their legend lives on though. Even though Keith Richards and Mick Jagger won their lawsuit challenging the rightful authorship of The Verve anthem “Bittersweet Symphony,” Chris Martin still called it the greatest song ever written when he brought out Richard Ashcroft to sing it with Coldplay at Live 8.

More than a decade after Urban Hymns’ release, a reunited Verve arrived in New York City for two shows at the WaMu Theater at Madison Square Garden. The Verve’s 1997 masterpiece, provided the heart of the show. Even ten years later, “Come On,” “The Rolling People” and “Lucky Man” remain great rock songs and are fantastic arena anthems. With every song from their classic album, they offered a reminder as to why they were once bandied about in the same sentence as Oasis and Blur.

Sharing Oasis’ penchant for lush Beatles-style arrangements, The Verve might have survived their internal struggles if they were able to evolve with the times. At the MSG Theater, it was easy to see why The Verve never achieved any lasting success. Any of their non-Urban Hymns material, whether written before or after, sounded all too similar to songs contained on their signature album. When Ashcroft picked up an acoustic guitar and began the encore by strumming the opening riffs of “History,” it sounded identical to the main hook of an earlier played rendition of “Space And Time.” A lengthy psychedelic jam would have been a nice change of pace if Simon Jones hadn’t been playing the bass line on which it was based for the past half hour.

Even if all the royalties go the Glimmer Twins, The Verve are always going to attract a crowd as long as they play “Bittersweet Symphony.” As the song progressed, Ashcroft stopped delivering the song and went into cheerleader mode, goading the crowd into singing along, addressing the impact of the song more than the song itself. It made for a nice moment of audience participation but lacked the impact or import that Ashcroft gave it during his solo tour. Instead of taking a bow and saying good night at the close of the anthem, The Verve pushed their luck, playing a new song with a Euro-dance beat that destroyed the glorious mood created by “Bittersweet Symphony.” In deeming the last song a “new classic,” you wonder if Ashcroft’s definition of “classic” differs from the rest of the world.

Currently occupied with The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Simon Tong is sitting out this reunion tour, leaving Nick McCabe as the band’s sole guitarist on what is essentially a show aimed at fans looking to bask in some late ‘90s nostalgia. Awkwardly, the only people who mistook The Verve for a still-relevant band seemed to be the four people on stage. In announcing and playing some tepid new material, Ashcroft acted as if the world still clamored and yearned for new Verve music. While you can never say never; it seems like the times have passed The Verve by and in trying to adapt to a new musical era, they are skewing so far from the music that earned them their enduring legend. It truly is a bittersweet symphony.

Labels: The Verve