"Love is Noise" by The Verve

In a rare instance of modern music overtaking the Dial’s receivers, hot on the heels of last month’s review of 2013’s “Wishing Well” by Wild Cub, we bring you a quality track that is only six years old… practically a “brand new song” when compared to the typical tunes we cover! Fine tune your speakers, and settle on in, for The Verve’s comeback hit “Love is Noise”.

“Will those feet in modern times, walk on soles that are made in China?”

Spearheaded by vocalist and songwriter Richard Ashcroft, alongside guitarist Nick McCabe, bassist Simon Jones, and drummer Peter Salisbury, Manchester England's The Verve is perhaps best known stateside for the elegant 1997 hit “Bitter Sweet Symphony”, and the resulting legal battles regarding its use of a sample of an orchestral cover of a Rolling Stones song… look it up and give it a read, it’ll make your head spin. But across the pond, this alternative rock group racked up six UK Top 40 singles, three of which peaked in the top 10 including the aforementioned "Bitter Sweet".

 

Not issued as a single in the U.S. (a damn crime, as I’m convinced this awesome cut would have handily eliminated the “one-hit wonder” designation from Ashcroft’s group…), “Love” was successful in returning The Verve to the UK top 10, landing a very respectable #4 position, following an 11 year absence from the chart. 

 

“Are we blind… can we see? We are one, incomplete.”

 

The first cut pulled from 2008's Forth LP, and lyrically inspired by a William Blake poem, “Love” seems to sarcastically suggest that the pursuit of romance is a selfish distraction from the bigger picture of improving ourselves on a personal and societal level. The very chorus seems to deride love as purely unnecessary, as if it is just so much noise in the background. 

Additionally, the verses take a stab at consumerism, (the Chinese made soles, and a mention of “bright prosaic malls”, whose corridors “go on and on and on”), along with a recognition of the “world’s affliction”, “righteous anger”, and “addiction”. Perhaps the addiction Ashcroft sings about is to the very consumerism he is rallying against here. 

 

“Will those feet in modern times, understand this world’s affliction?”

Despite the somewhat cryptic lyrics, “Love” delivers an upbeat groove that draws equally from alternative, pop, and dance. Listen for the curious and catchy background vocal loop which is actually Ashcroft playing around on an old vocoder. It sounds like he's chanting “Oh no, Oh no, Oh no”...

 

When coupling The Verve with last month's Wild Cub entry, you would be forgiven, Dialophiles, if you assumed we were abandoning that core decade we love so much. Not to worry, we haven't turned our back on our love of the '80s,we just wanted to showcase a few recent tracks that deserved the Dial's spotlight!

Stay tuned as we bring you more great tracks from the 70s through the current day, heavily weighted toward the decade of leg warmers, Atari, fluorescent neon colors, and of course, MTV! (back when they actually played videos... don't get us started!)

 

"Love is noise... love is pain... love is these blues that I'm singing again..."