A few notable Verve releases from 2004

Magnetic Fields - i. Had "69 Love Songs" never come to pass, many people would consider this to be a very fine album. But thankfully, "69LS" does exist and opinions on this album must suffer as a result. More accurately, the album has a few weak points and has only ten or so songs to pick up the slack, whereas "69LS" has fifty songs to pick up the slack from its weaker moments. "i" sometimes crumbles under the weight of its own genre-hopping ambitions, but the finest moments, such as the fragile "I Die", and the beautiful closer "It's Only Time", are impeccable.

Delgados -- Universal Audio. Recall that I originally thought that "Hate" was a Verve release too. Right now, I'm digging the tunefulness of the new album while missing the bombast of their last (fortunately, that bombast was provided in spades during their live show).

Orbital -- Blue Album. For their final album, Orbital revisited every phase of their career. Their career, viewed as a whole, is a big, giant, Verve release.

Various (Kompakt) artists -- Kompakt 100. Strictly, this isn't a Verve release since only about half of it can be considered to be up to the loftiest of standards. However, that fantastic half has made me smile as much as anything has this year, particularly the daft and wonderful "Weiche Zäune".