Cooking Vinyl Records (label)
18 June 2012 (released)
22 June 2012
Poor old Reverend and his makers, after an impressive debut album containing the fabulous Heavyweight Champion of the World, the public fell largely out of lover with British guitar bands; suddenly Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand and Hard-Fi were all out of fashion. Yet Noel Gallagher’s return last year showed there was still some hunger for well written, very British rock.
The Makers’ arrival came shortly after fellow Sheffield stars Arctic Monkeys, so lazy comparisons because of the Yorkshire accent were inevitable. Yet they were always a very different prospect than Alex Turner’s more articulate and thoughtful (and now) crooning rock. Reverend & the Makers are far more obvious, more in your face and certainly more of a lads rock band, as songs such as Noisy Neighbour prove; “tell my noisy neighbour in the interest of a truce to step right into the party, or then again just move”. You can hear lads on their way back from the Friday night pub nodding their approval at such platitudes.
Lead man John McLure’s always been a vocal sort and his description of a “pop hell” that currently grips the UK music market points to a frustration that might not be unfounded. However his ranting is largely limited to the press releases and interviews here, with a move away from any political statement in the songs. This is far more about normal life, the seemingly mundane, but nevertheless the kind of stuff we all have in common.
So there are songs about Facebook, the excellent Warts N All, a horrible boss on the thumping Hard-Fi sounding Out of the Shadows and a reflective love song Yes You Do. The lottery winning sing-a-long of Shine the Light sounds like a great live anthem, especially with its opening refrain of “I dreamed I scooped the lot, I’d have two words for my boss and the second one is off.”
At just over 35 minutes there is no real wastage, although Depth Charge’s reggae infusion and 1+0’s euro disco are less welcome. McLure says that during the Gallagher tour, the new songs went down better than the old ones. Something he describes as the stuff of dreams for a band coming back after a while away. But it might say more about the previous two albums than it does this one.
