Back in the late 90’s the Verve came out with the colossal hit Bittersweet Symphony and quickly went away. For the past ten years or so they have been broken up because of creative differences and drug problems. Last year the band came back together for a tour and in August of this year The Verve came back with a new album titled Fourth. My first impression of the album was that it was some kind of new age instrumental experiment or possibly a record about Jesus. There is a real Thomas Kinkaid vibe to the cover art that I am just not digging. The first single/video off the album is called Love is Noise. I’m not sure about love but this song is just that, noise. It’s derivative of every other song about the agony and ecstasy of love and the video is a badly edited mish mash of images that don’t even follow a coherent theme let alone any sort of chronology or story.
The entire album relies heavily on overproduced background noise to try and give some kind of depth to the trite lyrics. These guys are trying extremely hard to be U2 and it just isn’t working. Nothing about this album is original. Every song reeks of being written for optimum radio playability. This thing might even turn up on some top 40 stations but I can’t see it being played anywhere except a middle school dance. It’s too safe, too boring and took up too much of my life already.
Popularity: 19% [?]
