The Verve – Forth

It's eleven years since Urban Hymns, and perhaps even more so the single "Bittersweet Symphony" which set the UK alternative rock world on fire. Breaking up shortly after the release of the album, The Verve went their separate ways - Richard Ashcroft released a string of pretty uninteresting solo records, with The Verve's drummer Peter Salisbury playing on them. Simon Tong went on to various projects including The Good, The Bad and The Queen with Damon Albarn of Blur, Paul Simonon of The Clash, and Tony Allen. Nick McCabe frankly didn't really do a lot of anything.Somehow, the band managed to patch things up and although Tong was too busy with Albarn and co to take part, everyone else got back together with plans for this oh-so-wittily titled fourth album. A tour was also organised, including appearing at this year's V Festival in August - The Verve were officially back. No-one could really predict what this fourth album would entail - even Urban Hymns, widely regarded as a classic of the 1990s, was arguably very patchy and was dominated by the more conventional songwriting on "Bittersweet Symphony", "Sonnet", "Lucky Man" and the touching "The Drugs Don't Work" as opposed to the spacey, psychedelic efforts like "Catch The Butterfly". Forth is mostly geared towards The Verve's more rambling, experimental side - only one of the ten songs here manages to stay under the five minute mark. The bloated nature of the album is one of the main things holding it back, as we'll see.The songs on Forth are less about structured songwriting than they are about what is essentially extended, albeit glitteringly produced, jamming. All the drumming basically just cycles around aimlessly, sounding interesting at the start of the songs but soon becoming mind-numbing, for example. On single "Love Is Noise", an incredibly annoying distorted vocal sample is repeated again, and again, and again literally all the way through the song as Ashcroft sings his pretty inane lyrics - "love is noise, love is pain". Quite. Over five and a half minutes, the song just keeps on plodding - the intensity builds a little as each new verse begins, but ultimately this a three-minute pop rock song pushed far too far. Bear in mind that this is the second shortest song on offer here.Other songs are much more extended and conform less to the conventional songwriting that placed constraints on "Love Is Noise". "Numbness" is extremely fittingly titled - it's a veritable dirge, an extended, sludgy jam that completely fails to hold the listener's attention simply because it appears to have no aim, no objective. It just glides along on McCabe's echoing guitar work and Salisbury's bored, lethargic drumming. Many of these songs actually have the audacity to fade out - they leave us hanging, waiting for a proper hook for six, seven, eight minutes, and then even in that time they can't see themselves actually ending the song properly. Consequently, Forth sounds like a 2am bash-about that went on far too long that was subsequently cut up and tidied by its producer. Fans of The Verve's more experimental, psychedelic and spacey past work may find this appealing, but anyone seeking a solid, coherent rock album would be best looking elsewhere.At its best on songs like "Love Is Noise" and "Valium Skies", Forth can sound like a decent album - tight, well-constructed, planned. On the bloated, turgid weak points that dominate the tracklisting, like "Numbness" and "Noise Epic", Forth can be nigh-on unlistenable, a rambling, endless monstrosity of an album that will make most listeners pine for the high points of The Verve's illustrious past. As a complete package, Forth just doesn't seem worthwhile - an uninspiring addendum to a band whose best work is long behind them. 48%The Verve on MySpace