After a three year hiatus REVEREND AND THE MAKERS are back with their third and arguably best album yet. It’s entitled ‘@reverend_makers’ because, as Jon McLure explains, “the songs the little situations I see living in Sheffield in 2012. Nothing seems to sum up the present and the times we live in more than the @ symbol.”
Gone are the politics that informed the last two albums and in their place is an aural reportage of the everyday, the big and the little stories of a northern city in the grand tradition of fellow Yorkshire men such as Pulp and Arctic Monkeys.
McLure explains ‘I was fed up with what I was doing. I got right into political stuff and I was mardy all the time. It was making me miserable and I needed time out. I went a bit bonkers basically but I’m back in a good place now. This album is much more upbeat. Basically, I cheered the fuck up mate.’
The new album sees a return to the social conscious that marked out his initial forays into music. 21st century kitchen sink with the internet and social networking as well as beer and fags and fights. It’s this knack of taking snapshots of the everyday life and turning them into song that is McLure’s special talent.
‘Warts n All’is about girls posing in their pictures on Facebook and peer rivalry while ‘Out Of The Shadows’ is about a boss making life hell. It has huge crossover potential with McLure’s soulful voice perfectly complimenting a song of redemption in the gloom. ‘One Plus Zero’ is a kitchen sinker while ‘Noisy Neighbour’ is about turning music up in competition. There is even a love song on the album. ‘’Yes You Do’, an ode to McLure’s wife.
REVEREND AND THE MAKERS are back to reclaim their crown. Never has real life sounded so good. The tumbledown of cheap drugs, gritty realism, thrilling escapism, sex, and fish and chip suppers, hedonistic living, all night dance music in dank semi legal cellars, and the comedown – all soundtracked by great guitar music.
McLure is a man who has found himself and doesn’t need to escape any more.