Paperjam

A Storm in Heaven by Verve (before they added the The) was a really cool record; Epic, spacey, messed up and a bit shoe-gazey. It was just the sort of thing for moody 18 year olds to sulk in their bedrooms to.

A Northern Soul was a fucking amazing record; Huge, angry and soulful. Born out of what was reported as being a particularly “difficult” recording process involving drugs, mental illness, a number of fights and some wrecked cars. It was just the sort of thing for cynical, lovelorn students to play too loudly in their bedrooms.

A Northern Soul scraped the charts, the next single, the superb History stated on the cover “All farewells should be sudden”. That was that, The Verve had broken up.

They re-surfaced a while later with the soon to be ubiquitous Bitter Sweet Symphony, followed by the album Urban Hymns. It was ok and had a couple of good tracks on but generally was a diluted version of what had come before. It was just the thing for middle managers to play at dinner parties and inspire a whole generation of deeply insipid bands.

The Verve disintegrated nastily once more and Richard Ashcroft went his own way to produce a load of fairly listenable but fairly bland music much in the same vein as the mellower parts of Urban Hymns. On the plus side, he did inspire one of the greatest albums ever made by nicking one J Spaceman’s girlfriend.

Now it appears that The Verve are back at it in their original line up, stuff is being recorded, an album is planned for release and some dates are going on sale this week. I’ll definitely go and see them, but if new developments follow the trajectory described above it might all end up a bit close to Snow Patrol territory. Lets hope not, although the last-minute decision I made to not get “Too busy staying alive” tattooed on my arm will look even wiser.

No, really, I'm done, it's a school night, thank-you. Is it your round, really? Oh well, I suppose I could sink a swift one.

Now, Paper-jam doesn't usually do beer reviews. We have zero technical know-how of beer, beyond our near-encyclopedic knowledge of where to buy the stuff. And we can't reach the near orgasmic verbal heights of a Jilly Goolden or an Oz Clarke (yes, we know that's wine) - but as I manfully dredge through the end of my sister's very thoughtful (and jealously guarded) birthday present of 30 bottles of ale, felt I should stand up and shout for an American beer.

Those last words feel like a strange thing to write, but that's only because of the ubiquity of the global piss known as Budweiser. As I was growing up - imagine fields, roads going in circles, West Midlands buses, and the quavering buzz of my tiny Casio keyboard - well, beer wasn't really an option. I was a kid. Come on, this isn't France for God's sake.

Well what I meant to say there that after a brief dalliance with Hofmeister - purely 'cos it was a pound a can in Silvers, I graduated to bitter, and became an old fart, before my time.

Cutting a rather dull story short, involving steam cider, beer festivals, the inevitable John Fucking Smiths, and more recently to weissbier, and the evil of Belgian Trappist beer (those monks? no need for a vow of silence after one too many bottles of Judas, speech is barely physically possible), we arrive at the wonder of Brooklyn Lager.

Calling it a lager rather sullies it, to my mind. Lager I associate with tasteless pints of nothing, designed to give the average John Bull type a big head about how many they can sink of an evening, the dull "session" pint. Brooklyn (5.2%), apparently a Vienna-style beer according to the ever-unreliable internet, reminds me of another US tipple, Goose Island IPA - a fruity, dense pale ale that can't be drunk in vast quantities. Goose Island seems rather unpopular with the locals round here - a manager of a nearby hostelry once offered me a case of the stuff, claiming that I was the only one who was drinking it.

Brooklyn seems easier going than Goose Island, more floral, and rather easier to sink - better for the summer, I'd venture - rather than the more autumnal flavour of the pale ale from the windy city. I'd love to bang on about the hue and nose of Brooklyn, but it never touched the side of a glass - it was thrown down in a hurry, just before I chomped through a homemade feast of noodles and chicken.

Where can you buy Brooklyn Lager? Well, I saw a couple of bottle lurking in the 70s aisles of Cannon Park Tescos earlier, and I'm sure you could bag a brace at Alexander Wines in Earlsdon - or if by some quirk of fate, you don't actually live in Coventry, I'm sure your local boozer could be persuaded.