POP MUSIC REVIEW : Verve at Palace Can’t Match Edge of ‘Soul’

It’s where every rock star starts: in front of a mirror pretending to be Elvis, Dylan, Clapton et al. Judging from the Verve’s performance at the Palace on Wednesday, Richard Ashcroft must have fancied himself Mick Jagger--on a day when the Stones singer could barely get out of bed.

Instead of mystery and charisma, Ashcroft’s slow-motion, pop-star posing generated mere inertia. His arrogance and ennui might have carried some weight had they seemed connected to the music, but even when the Verve’s three instrumentalists mounted the occasional powerful crescendo, he stuck to his secondhand persona. It didn’t take long to realize that there would be no surprises, no revelations, no response to the moment at hand.

Aside from those intense passages, the Verve--currently the prominent representative of England’s school of “shoegazing” bands--didn’t come close to matching the moody atmospherics and edge that it captures on its new album, “A Northern Soul.”

On record the band is derivative, mainly of U2 and PiL, but at least it’s urgent and dynamic. On stage it avoids risks by curling up in a ball of trivial anguish and uninvolving murk--all prelude, no payoff.