Ashcroft & Co Rock The Theatre at MSG

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April 30, 2008

The Verve
Madison Square Garden Theater, New York City

It’s fitting that we’re writing about reunited Britpop titans the Verve the same day Coldplay’s new single hit the web. Watching Richard Ashcroft sway and heave last night, we couldn’t stop thinking about how Chris Martin swiped his rock star act from the willowy Verve front man. But while Martin often seems to be playing a rock star rather than being a rock star, there’s no question Ashcroft is the real thing. Immediately after walking out from the wings last night, he glared at us in the photo pit, angrily pointed and then proceeded to flip a massive bird our way while launching into the crushing “A New Decade.” There was no real rhyme or reason behind the gesture (we never stole Ashcroft’s girl or anything) — that’s just what rock stars do. Ask Liam Gallagher.

The Verve’s reunion tour rings truer than similar treks because they’re not just simply recycling hits. Along with the obligatory “Bittersweet Symphony” (forever undeniable) and “The Drugs Don’t Work” (somewhat lifeless), the four piece broke out two new songs and several older tunes that harked back to the days before they worried about working pop hooks into their death-obsessed psych-rock. And, truth be told, the Verve seemed way more excited to play early ’90s tracks like the cascading noise-fest “Already There” and the epic “Gravity Grave” than most of the more popular tracks from their breakthrough LP, Urban Hymns. To wit, one of the new songs, “Sit and Wonder” was a dark swirl of feedback and near-tribal chanting — safe to say it has zero chance of breaking through a la “Bittersweet Symphony” here in the States. (The other new one, “Love Is Noise,” didn’t sound like the Verve new or old — the hi-hat heavy rave-up came off like a Bloc Party anthem.)
But one of the best moments came when Ashcroft peeled a banana, ate it and threw the remains onto the stage mid-song … and made it look cool. Let’s see Chris Martin pull that off.

via L4E / source: Blender Blog