Forth by The Verve

Forth, the Verve's fourth and final album, arrived on 25 August 2008, their first new studio record since Urban Hymns in 1997. The Wigan band had split in 1999 and patched things up in 2007, and this was the original four back in a room: Richard Ashcroft singing, Nick McCabe on guitar, Simon Jones on bass and Peter Salisbury on drums, without Simon Tong for the first time since A Northern Soul.

McCabe's guitar gets room to roam again, spilling out long, spacey washes that call back to the band's psychedelic beginnings, while Ashcroft croons over the top. "Love Is Noise" got its first airing on BBC Radio 1 and turned into a European summer hit. The album topped the UK Albums Chart, just as Urban Hymns had, and went gold. The reunion didn't last: the old tensions flared up and the band broke up again in 2009.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.