One of the best albums of the 1990s was Urban Hymns by The Verve.  The album was a top-to-bottom tour de force of swirling guitars and soaring, atmospheric ruminations on God, life, betrayal, death, and love.  Unfortunately, behind the music was personal conflict that drove the band apart.  Ironically, not only did the resulting moderate fame spurred by the album's hit "Bittersweet Symphony" exacerbate the friction among the band's members, but the Rolling Stones sued the band over the unauthorized sampling of the symphonic backbone of the song; not only did the band break up after their only bona fide hit, they didn't make any money on it.

It is now 10 years later, and time heals at least many wounds.  The Verve are back with a new album titled Forth.  Apparently making smart, deep, virtuoso albums is like riding a bike, because the band picks up exactly where they left off without skipping a beat, so to speak.  Whether lamenting the emptiness of consumerism or pondering deeper issues of love, God, soul, and betrayal (again), the songs are poignant and beautiful at times, rocking and noisy at others.  Musically, the band is tight and cohesive, and Richard Ashcroft returns as a premier rock & roll frontman.  Nobody does deep philosophical longing within a rock and roll context quite like The Verve, yet they do it without sounding self important or too earnest for their own good.

Highlights on the album include the first single, the fast and furious "Love Is Noise", the multilayered and mellow "Judas", the longingful "I See Houses", and the swirling lustrous "Valium Skies"; however, going against the grain of the single-song iTunes download era, the songs work best as a collection, as an actual album — something of a rarity since the demise of the LP and CD.  Like Urban Hymns before it, the whole is better than the sum of its parts.  Resist the temptation to cherry pick individual songs and buy the whole thing.  This album took 10 years, but it is definitely worth the wait.