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By: Scott Brendel
The Verve :: 04.23.08 :: Warfield Theatre :: San Francisco, CA
 The Verve |
Rare is the occasion when a band reforms. Even more rare is the occasion when a band reforms twice, original members intact, and records a new album. Enter The Verve. Like a champagne supernova, The Verve returned to orbit at The Warfield as part of a brief tour surrounding their appearance at Coachella, and treated longtime fans to selections from their catalog as well as a preview of two dynamic new songs from their upcoming album.
Despite prolonged technical difficulties, The Verve took the crowd on an emotional ride through their brilliant songbook and reminded fans why they are one of the top bands to emerge from the '90s Brit-pop scene. Combining the cocksure swagger of Oasis with the shamanic theatrics of The Doors, vocalist Richard Ashcroft was the crowd's anchor and resident mystic as a kaleidoscopic swirl of guitar feedback and trance-inducing rhythms erupted from guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones and drummer Pete Salisbury.
Opening up with "A New Decade," Ashcroft's lyrics were apropos for the evening: "A New Decade/ The radio plays the sounds we made/ and everything seems to feel just right." From there, they jumped between songs from the second album, A Northern Soul, and the better known third album, Urban Hymns, including "Sonnet," "This is Music" and "Space and Time".
With its drifty guitar scrapes and rolling bassline, fan favorite "Life's An Ocean" brought some promise that the band would not be solely relying on their more commercial material and instead give nods to their debut, A Storm in Heaven and their self-titled EP, as they had on their Fall '07 tour of England.
The Verve gave the crowd an early surprise with the new song "Sit and Wonder." With the shoegazing guitar squall the band perfected on A Storm in Heaven, McCabe was able to lose himself in waves of reverb and white noise as Salisbury and Jones locked into a tribal groove while Ashcroft stalked the stage, pleading "Give me some life" as if his own life depended on it.
Sadly, technical problems for McCabe cropped up for much of the set, to the point that his guitar tech was onstage as much as the band, giving the evening a bit of a Spinal Tap feel and causing Ashcroft to remind the crowd they were just like them – human and playing "live music."
Richard Ashcroft - The Verve by Dave Vann
With the technical challenges removed, the band roared back to life with "The Rolling People", a rocking number whose initial notes detonated into the acoustics of The Warfield like a pulse bomb, erasing any memories of McCabe's guitar problems and refocusing the evening on what everyone had traveled to hear – the songs. "The Rolling People" kicked off a long block of tracks from Urban Hymns including "Velvet Morning," the spaghetti western ballad "The Drugs Don't Work" and the obligatory performance of their biggest hit, "Bittersweet Symphony."
At the heart of "Bittersweet Symphony" is a looped sample from an orchestral version of The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," which in a live setting is also the song's Achilles heel since the band is chained to the pace of the loop. Despite a stunning light show and McCabe's mind-bending guitar, a machine-like performance could not be avoided.
It's ironic that their best known song is one tied to a triggered sample while the better songs in their repertoire are born from free form jam sessions that allow the songs to breathe in the ebb and flow of a live setting. A song like the colossal "Come On" (complete with seizure-inducing light show) that ended the main set on such a high note only seemed to highlight the flaws within "Bittersweet."
Of course, this is 2008, and in an age where fans now thrust a cell phone in the air rather than a lighter, the majority of the crowd cared little whether or not The Verve played along to a sample and rewarded the band with rapturous applause as they sang along to the modern day blues of "Bittersweet Symphony." In fact, a good chunk of the crowd in the upper reaches of the balcony were near comatose in their response to any song not on Urban Hymns and seemed to recoil at the thought of actually standing up at a rock show.
The setlist placement of the band's biggest song also seemed to indicate the end of the show was near, but the band had one final card up its sleeve. Introduced as the first single from their forthcoming as-yet-untitled album, "Love Is Noise" was a propulsive, beat-driven rave-up that saw Ashcroft loop his own voice at the beginning of the song and then sing against it throughout the selection. The club-like beat allowed McCabe to ricochet notes off the rhythm as Ashcroft crooned and the coda built into a gospel-tinged house song that left the crowd howling for more.
"Love is Noise" also seemed to subconsciously answer the questions poised by "Bittersweet Symphony." By harnessing aspects of new technology and creating an evolution in their sound, The Verve seem poised to continue their on again, off again journey to the upper echelon's of rock 'n' roll's Mt. Olympus.
04.23.08 :: Warfield Theatre :: San Francisco, CA
A New Decade, Sonnet, This Is Music, Space and Time, Life's an Ocean, On Your Own,
Weeping Willow, Sit and Wonder, The Rolling People, Velvet Morning, The Drugs Don't Work, Lucky Man, Come On
Encore: Bitter Sweet Symphony, Love is Noise
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