By Kirk Baird
Some bands are never meant to be successful; they exist only to push musical boundaries, to sire radio-popular progeny and to be cited in opinion polls by elitist music critics.
Brit-popsters The Verve should have been one of those bands.
Certainly their exit from the music scene in 1999, while not particularly graceful, was as definitive as rock ’n’ roll can be. Members of The Verve, after years of battling drugs and each other, opted to walk away from their decade-old effort.
But this was two years after Nike used the band’s song “Bittersweet Symphony” in a TV ad to sell shoes. It was a successful commercial move The Verve rejected but couldn’t halt because ABKCO Records owner Allen Klein owned the song’s rights.
The damage was done; The Verve were no longer fringe.
Nearly a decade later, the band is reunited and performing again, including an April 26 show at the Pearl at the Palms. But clearly, the members still have issues with the group’s success.
“Radio stations never fucking played us because they didn’t fucking understand us,” said frontman Richard Ashcroft, 24 hours after The Verve performed at Coachella.
“Then Allen Klein sold the song to Nike.”
It’s worth noting that Ashcroft’s comment was made after a psychedelic reinvention of the bluesy “Life’s an Ocean,” a song that, no matter what music style, isn’t suitable for radio—in the same way there’s no radio love for jam bands or for any group considered neo-psychedelic.
And that’s the paradox of The Verve, a band of many things to many people, from saccharine (“The Drugs Don’t Work”) to trippy (“Life’s an Ocean”) to raucous (“This is Music”). To see The Verve is to engorge in a musical buffet.
Certainly this night’s 16-song setlist included something for everyone, with highlights such as “This is Music,” “Weeping Willow” and “Disco,” which closed the roughly 90-minute show.
The band’s performance certainly justified its reunion. The quartet of Ashcroft, Nick McCabe (guitar), Simon Jones (bass) and Peter Salisbury (drums) was tight and musically focused; Ashcroft, in particular, was in great form, looking every bit a young Mick Jagger, full of swagger and, well, verve.
It’s doubtful that the performance made any converts of non-Verve fans; the band has always been a take-it-or-leave-it kind of group.
Still, the future bodes well for The Verve—let’s just hope Nike isn’t there to screw it up.
The Verve
*** 1/2
April 26, The Pearl