Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 09/11/07

Two years ago, Richard Ashcroft limbed back into the pop public eye and foolishly declared: "I feel just like Jesus Christ". The more cynical amongst us, who had looked on as The Verve's coruscating star man turned into indie's Val Doonican before our eyes, wondered if he meant he was reborn or dead. Creatively, he was indeed a corpse. Yet the Biblical idiom had previously been a heavyweight other galaxy that Ashcroft, Nick McCabe, Pete Salisbury and Simon Jones somehow seemed able to access. Of course the singer couldn't fly. But their interstellar music did travel at the speed of sound.

Now they're back, six months after the reunion rollercoaster picked up four more passengers, dulled by rock retirement and eager to show us (and themselves) they deserve another shot at glory. The Verve's final days in 1998 were bluntly scored by two main themes, namely their enormous, Oasis-style power and populism, and the rather more negative alienation then departure of alchemic guitarist McCabe, fleeing from Ashcroft's ego elephantitis. At the second of two Roundhouse reunion shows, the ugly, blokey terrace fanbase remains. However, the balance of power within the band has clearly settled.

The results are almost entirely spectacular. McCabe, who might as well have been hiding in a hole with Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden for the past ten years, somehow looks to have become an even greater guitarist. The band's triumphant emergence is kicked into shape by a blistering opening salvo of "A New Decade" and "This Is Music", the quartet locking back into this widescreen sound with easy, immediate drama. But throughout the set, eyes are surely on McCabe, as he builds the wiry maelstrom of "Gravity Grave", cacophonous new track "Sit And Wonder", the furious downpour of "Already There" and mutant hook of "A Northern Soul".

Crouched over his guitar, back to the audience, dispatching flumes of howling noise, The Verve play as one. Ashcroft has no need for bilious hectoring or, for much of the show, his guitar, thankfully. He is a different man, inciting, agitating, the possessed shaman that was once so deserving of our praise and his wonder. They cannot fail and the set is judged potently, the cosmic psychedelic explorations of old against the more obvious balladry that gave them a place at Britpop's top table. This communion may not be so completely familiar with "Man Called Sun", "History" or "On Your Own", but these songs were the perhaps better roots of the big woe music to come.

Even so, slighting "Drugs Don't Work", "Lucky Man" and a stratospheric, era-encapsulating "Bittersweet Symphony" would be disingenuous, as the band tear the roof off and again spy a shaft of light strafing towards a fire-escape in the sky. As they return for the encore, Ashcroft, McCabe, Salisbury and Jones embrace on-stage, perhaps aware they have been given a second, third and, with this comeback, a fourth chance to make The Verve work, for them and us. Only now can Ashcroft speak of resurrection and truly believe it.

by Ben Gilbert