The Verve's third and presumably final era (2007-2009) yielded a quality Verve album-- it's just that it was made by the Big Pink. The success of the London duo's A Brief History of Love proved there was still a demand for those bygone qualities-- anthemic choruses, stadium-rattling drums, and a cosmic grandeur-- that made the Verve's a late-1990s totem. Alas, those qualities were at a premium on the Verve's own unfocused 2008 comeback effort, . Whether or not singer Richard Ashcroft was taking notes on his Big Pink progeny, he's responded to Verve v. 3.0's aborted mission with an album of excitable, populist electro-soul. But if sounded like a half-hearted attempt to recapture the early Verve's free-form spirit, Ashcroft's maiden voyage with his new band, RPA & the United Nations of Sound, is sunk by a grating, calculated over-eagerness to please.