​Reverend and the Makers

Review by Jeff Reines

Yeah, I know – yet another in-yer-face clan of northern rockers with a gangly, gesticulating lead singer who thinks he’s the greatest thing to hit the music scene since, well, uh, the last one.

Spot on, but that didn’t stop the talented Sheffield seven-piece from whipping the all-age crowd into an appreciative, hand-thrusting frenzy with an hour-plus of catchy, multi-instrumental more hit than miss tunes after a short, but storming performance from one of mid-Cornwall’s most promising acts.

Openers Marble Fairy, the new vehicle for former Glass Shark Jimmy Green , and a bit gimmicky with the two girls up front in matching spangly dresses and painted on eye masks, showed some promise, if electro-tinged guitar pop is your thing. The five-piece’s ouvre is danceable enough and, judging by the reaction of the early crowd, definitely has an audience keen on its energetic, disco-rock crossover sound.

But I was just glad to have got my act together enough, a rare feat, in time to catch the full, if brief, set from St Agnes’ Auction for the Promise Club, who remain a personal favourite after several local gigs in the past year. The trio get a more expansive, complex, tight sound out of two guitars and a drum kit than many a band twice their size. Add to the melodious, spiralling hooks diminutive Zoe White-Chambers’ haunting, truly unique voice and their upcoming debut EP, currently being recorded at London’s famed Abbey Road, vows to be worth a punt.

It remains a mystery to me how a) promoters SW1 manage to get chart-toppers like ‘Reverend’ John McClure et al to swing down to Cornwall and b) how they then fail to sell out.

It didn’t bode well on the intentionally affected front when McClure, a semi-reluctant ‘edgy spokesman for a generation’ simply because he regularly airs articulate and thoughtful political views, hit the stage in zipped up, puffy parka, hood up and all, but maybe it’s a way of staving off overheating later on.

The seven seemingly multi-talented cohorts - a few regularly swapping instruments throughout, alongside keyboardist Laura Manuel’s effectively seductive moves – were soon in full swing, with the audience lapping it up. Despite the nonsensical finger pointing and now stereotypical swagger, McClure proved an entertaining frontman, lapsing into politics only to randomly fire expletives at the BNP and rant through what I can only assume was a polemic, short rap, rendered fairly incoherent due to the rapid-fire, heavily accented delivery.

Outspoken and headline-grabbing he may be, but McClure easily won over the audience, complimenting Falmouth’s individuality and lack of ubiquitous chain stores, as well as the woman who appears to have returned the handbag he had bought and misplaced, and the band’s hits, sprinkled towards the end and including Open the Window, He Said He Loved Me (when Manuel did come into her own) and masterfully-rendered Heavyweight Champion of the World, got everyone bouncing, smiling and belting out the words back at him.

The band, and McClure especially, may be the latest in a long line of northern sermonising, harmonising, full-of-themselves dance-rock merchants, but long may they choose not to ignore the distant and, at least partially, grateful south.