The Magic Numbers @ London Barfly - live review 22nd Sep 2004

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When a band as boldly breathtaking as The Magic Numbers shows up, those unprepared are left foundering, wondering what just happened – in simple terms, 2005’s best band just played 2004’s best gig. Convivial singer/guitarist Romeo delivers heartbreakingly pretty, musically intricate, emotionally powerful songs like “Which Way To Happy” and “Hymn For Her”, the likes of which Lee Hazlewood would kill for. Romeo’s sister Michelle plucks bass and harmonies; drummer Sean’s sister Angela provides glockenspiel, melodica and more enchanting vox. Effortlessly, every line drags Donnie Darko-esque trails of awe-struck devotion from 200 enraptured listeners; we sing along to songs we’re mostly hearing for the first time – “It won’t hurt to find love in the wrong place” – and wilt as one, smiling like demented fools. This is pop music as it’s meant to be made. This is the beginning of something very special. Lie back and let the music nuzzle your belly.

Charlie Ivens

Originally published in The Fly magazine, November/December 2004 issue

The Verve – This Is Music – The Singles 1992-1998 album review

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When Verve followed their impressive first three singles (most notably the magnificent “Gravity Grave”) with debut album A Storm In Heaven in 1993, it was wrongly attached by a straw-grasping press to the tail-end of the shoegazing movement populated by southern mimsies like Slowdive. The reality was darker, stranger and, yes, more northern than that might suggest, as the album – represented here by “Blue” and “Slide Away” (no, not that one) – stands up as a loopy excursion into acid-fuelled psychedelic blues. Verve were then forced to add a The, following legal problems with the synonymous US record label, and their songwriting reached maturity with their masterpiece, A Northern Soul. “History”, that album’s near-hit single, marked the band’s transition from drugged-up curiosities to a serious musical force. And, being the prototype for the more ubiquitous but inferior “The Drugs Don’t Work”, it’s also The Verve’s creative high watermark: like Massive Attack and Radiohead, they hit paydirt an album late. That Urban Hymns, half a decent album at best – even including “Bittersweet Symphony” – wound up being The Verve’s bestseller, is an injustice which this compilation’s timely memory-jog should do something to rectify – even if Virgin have cocked up the track listing by not running it chronologically.

Charlie Ivens