Tuesday's Zen - The Verve - Love is Noise

Everyone's at it, right across the musical spectrum. From Smashing Pumpkins to The Spice Girls , from Rage Against the Machine right through to Take That . If you were big in the nineties, and you're still alive to tell the tale, the chances are you're either recording or touring right now. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, is best decided on a case by case basis. I mean, honestly, do we really need a new East 17 record?

Perhaps one of the most surprising comebacks considering the bands acrimonious history but certainly one of the most welcome has to be the re-merging of troubled indie demigods Ashcroft, McCabe and Jones.Coming hot on the heels of an epic Glastonbury sign-off performance and a full eleven years after the gargantuan Urban Hymns , Love is Noise is the first single to see the light of day from bands imaginatively entitled fourth studio album, Forth .

The poetic melancholy that is Ashcroft's lyrical trademark is still evident in the instantly memorable and identifiable chorus, whilst verses seem to hold aloft a Jerusalem shaped mirror only to discover a decidedly paler green and altogether less pleasant land in it's Olympic reflection;

"Will those feet in modern times,
Understand this righteous anger,
Recognise this world's addiction,
Understand this world's affliction?"

Add in the more upbeat tempo that was apparent on some Ashcroft's more recent solo work which seems to have transferred itself well to the band format, and you have an admirable enough comeback single.

I have to agree with Drowned in Sound though, and I guess it's almost inevitable, given the each member of the more mature line-up has an almost super-band status these days, but there is just a little too much of the Manics and U2 's about this track for my liking. You can make up your own mind below;


A valiant effort from the nineties luminaries but somehow I fear this is the single The Verve 's original fans expected, rather than the triumphant return they'd hoped for. Fans of A Northern Soul would probably do better to try Mover , which will not feature on Forth , but was released as a free download last week;

The Verve - Mover

Back Soon,
Winston.

Links:
The Verve Homepage
The Verve on MySpace
Parlophone Records