The State Of Things

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It’s a feisty uplifting record set to send perplexed skinny tied kids into ferocious swing across the country. The Reverend, Jon McClure, has waited for the correct moment amongst a busy local scene to unleash this menace of a debut album- binding his time as the Arctic Monkeys phenomena settled down.

I guess it’s a lot more personal and introspective these days. I’ve done a lot of politics, social realism, kitchen sink drama stuff, I’ve done the psychedelic hedonism thing. Though I did a bit of mental health on the first album, what I’ve never really done is introspective: looking at me and my relationships with people. Whether that’s my wife, my friends or people I’ve had disputes with and fallen out with, I guess there’s a lot of autobiographical stuff in there. You can’t start writing council estate kitchen sink stuff when you’re seven albums in. Although I’m not a millionaire I clearly have a decent standard of living, and get paid well for what I do, so I think it’d be really disingenuous to be writing what I wrote about on my first album, right?A lot of ageing, northern male indie starts to do that same melody… Everyone, fellas from the north especially, they’ve all got their own melodic thing. When you’re getting older and you’ve been doing it a long time, you hear a new record and you think, “oh you do that on every song you ever do!” I wanted to break that. I dunno, what’s the point in making less good versions of stuff you’ve already done, you know? McClure was in the media spotlight for his personal views in July 2009, after an interview in which he commented on Jade Goody's death earlier in the year; "it's sad she died and it's good more girls are getting smear tests but let's not forget she was a talentless racist". [9] In the summer of 2009 they have supported Oasis on the largest stadium tour in the UK and Ireland. On 1 September 2009, they performed a secret free gig at Tate Modern, London. [21] They were introduced by Sara Cox and supported by Stornoway. [22] The gig was to celebrate the launch of new climate change campaign—"10:10". [23] In November 2009, the band supported Kasabian on their nationwide tour. For the past 2 years, the band have played New Year's Eve shows at KOKO in Camden, London. You mentioned some of the clichés you’ve been associated with, and you have been known for speaking your mind over the years, particularly about some of your peers. The Johnny Borrell one in The Guardiancomes to mind. Are you still as cutthroat and damning these days? Like their pals, Arctic Monkeys, Reverend And The Makers are another Sheffield sensation whose rise was precipitated by word-of-mouth wonder and MP3 demo sharing, leading to the band – a vehicle for 25-year-old manic street preacher and local hero Jon McClure – selling out a 1,000-capacity hometown venue long before they’d signed a deal. McClure, an agreeably unhinged frontman and nifty wordsmith, spins colourful tales of humdrum living in his South Yorkshire accent. His ear for detail and provocative delivery recall veteran Manchester punk-poet John Cooper Clarke, who, it turns out, is McClure’s mentor.

The vocals of Jon’s girlfriend, Laura Manuel, provide occasional balanced purity to the main mans harsh constructive verbal rants. This particularly applies to latest single He Said He Loved Me with a shimmering duet telling the story of a heartbroken teenager who’s been dumped by an older man. It works well.

Of all the swagger lifting the peak of noughties UK indie, no one carried it better, louder, or more publicly than Reverend and the Makers’ Jon McClure. Me and Dan got into this really good thing where we’d get some music going and then he’d do the melody and I, like a jigsaw puzzle, fit my words into his melody. Because he’s coming from such a different place to where I would come from, it becomes this third thing. So we thought, what would it sound like if Ian Brown sang Frank Ocean songs? That was the brief. It ended up not being like that – I think someone said “Barry White if he were from Sheffield…”. But it’s not that either. It becomes this third thing, because you’ve got retro sounding music, modern melodies and then really personal Yorkshire-accented lyrics. It becomes this other thing that doesn’t exist, really.