Richard Ashcroft, The Verve
The Verve
Roundhouse Theatre, London
Friday 9th November 2007
by Thom Mills
This reviewer has a deep and unassailable love for The Verve. You know the kind where you're in your mid to late teens and starting to discover the little distractions life throws your way, just as you're supposed to be achieving things. One band find their way into your twin cassette ghetto blaster and the love affair begins, never to be broken. And so it was for me with The Verve, or Verve as they were known then.
The news that they were to reunite was music to my ears. I had a golden ticket to the last night of their comeback tour. They'd be sounding good by then. Back in the swing of things. Limber. And so the stage was set for our little reunion.
There were no support bands. Two screens were erected, one either side of the stage, on which were projected song titles, lyrics and images. A DJ played some tracks, apparently chosen by the band, as the atmosphere intensified. I joked with the girl in front, who turned out to be Edith Bowman, about the inconvenience of being under six foot at gigs and, as I was racking my brains for something witty to say, the lights went down.
The Verve took to the stage as you would expect from a band of their era, all silhouettes, smoke and ambient lighting. It did the job perfectly. The reception was rapturous. A New Decade, opening track from the band's second album, A Northern Soul, was the aptly named opener and what a way to start. The sound was phenomenal. McCabe's guitar sounded gargantuan as it roared into the opening refrain and frontman Ashcroft opened the pipes.
The beauty of the 'comeback tour' is that there are no recent endeavours to promote. Unshackled from the burden of progression, for now at least, The Verve delivered exactly what the vast majority of us were hoping for. Old material, and lots of it. The second track, This is Music, also from A Northern Soul, was a favourite with the crowd, who screamed the defiant opening words back at the stage, 'I stand accused, just like you, for being born without a silver spoon.' Everything was perfect. The sound, the set, I could see, I was standing next to....
By this point, Edith had left me. It may have been my singing but I was sure she was enjoying it. Anyway, it didn't matter because Gravity Grave was next. I'd been hoping for this one.
From that point on, they just kept coming. For fans of the third and most successful album, Urban Hymns (1997), there was Weeping Willow, Lucky Man, Sonnet and Drugs Don't Work, as well as an enormous, rousing version of Rolling People towards the end of the set. For lovers of the first two albums, A Storm in Heaven (1993) and A Northern Soul (1995), there was a whole host of treats to go with those already mentioned. Life's An Ocean, Stormy Clouds, Already There, A Northern Soul, On Your Own and History. There were also some rarities in the shape of b-sides, Man Called Sun and Let The Damage Begin.
The final song before the encore was, unsurprisingly, Bittersweet Symphony. A modern day classic that the crowd duly met with the euphoric and unified swagger which it demands. By this point, the night had done what it set out to do and then some. It had surpassed all expectations and both band and audience were, in the parlance of those halcyon days, 'avin it.
Just before they began the encore, another moment to remember. The band, whose 1999 split had seemed so irrevocable, congregated in the middle of the stage and hugged each other. This was clearly impromptu and symptomatic of the whole occasion. The encore was riotous, with the final song, Come On, ending in a cacophony of looping feedback and strobe lighting. Nobody left until the PA was down and the lights were up. Then we poured out into a cold London night to find another drink, safe in the knowledge that The Verve are back and the world is a better place.
For more details about The Verve, including any forthcoming UK tour dates, see their page here on Ents24.
