The disappearance of Richard Ashcroft’s star power is one of the great mysteries of pop’s last decade. He has somehow turned into rock’s embarrassing uncle, his solo records consistently unacclaimed. Still rich, no longer interesting, what else is there to do but get the old band back together?

The Verve were interesting once. They had ambition. Ashcroft – then known as Mad Richard – gave great quote, once claiming he could fly. Nick McCabe’s effects-heavy guitar sound was distinctive. They had a tidy rhythm section. Few bought their records but many willed them to make a good one.

As Britpop waned, the atrociously titled album Urban Hymns, both begun as Ashcroft solo projects, sold bucketloads. Famously their best-known tune Bittersweet Symphony proved lucrative mainly for the copyright holder of its key sample, taken from the Stones’ The Last Time, and, after a lawsuit, song-writing credits reverted from Ashcroft to Jagger and Richards.

If that is a musical tragedy, then this much-ballyhooed set can only be described as a farce. Forth (their “fourth” album – geddit?) is plain terrible. After one of their “legendary” formless jams was given away online, many wondered if Ashcroft’s prosaic solo work might be supplanted by the clueless spontaneity that the Verve were once known for. The interminable first single Love is Noise at least showed some spark, despite its uncanny resemblance to an old single by the Scottish MOR giants Texas.

The languid opening track Sit and Wonder actually exceeds that mild promise. McCabe’s tinkling guitar is unmistakable, eschewing drive for embellishment, while Ashcroft finds a hint of a melody. After that it’s downhill all the way. “I get this feeling that I’ve been here before” goes the chorus of the lumbering anthem I See Houses, echoing the fears of everyone who had ever been disappointed by a Verve record.

Noise Epic (a doubly incorrect title) attempts psychedelic grandeur, but instead sounds more like a half-hearted country-rock jam. Bizarrely it mutates into an atonal thrash that Sonic Youth might have knocked off 20 years ago. The endless two-note dirge Numbness certainly induces said sensation. Columbo at least has a nice bass line, faint praise indeed.

Every song is over five minutes. Not one has enough ideas to fill that time. Ashcroft’s glib lyrics barely have enough to fill a verse. The bland, platitudinous Rather Beis especially dire.

Yet the concept is sound. How many bands have attempted to recapture the mood and style of their naive years? If only the arrogance implicit in such a quixotic move – recapturing the mood of one’s juvenile excesses – could be matched by the results. Instead, the Verve want to have it both ways. So the insipid balladry of the atrocious, self-consciously mature Valium Skies sits uncomfortably alongside the musically restricted noodling of Noise Epic.

Jones and Salisbury are still a tidy rhythm section, true, but if anyone needs any further evidence that Urban Hymns was a lucky fluke, then here it is.

(Parlophone, TMS £11.99, call 0845 6026328)

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