REVEREND AND THE MAKERS - The State Of Things

A curious record, this "The State Of Things", the brainchild of one Jon Mclure, known as "The Reverend" — poet, performer and lively political agitator in Sheffield, already guilty of having given Alex Turner and Matt Helders of the hated/beloved Arctic Monkeys their first artistic communion in the deconsecrated (and subsequently collapsed) church of the funk collective Judan Siki, followed by a brief interlude under the name 1984.

The record in question enjoyed decent sales success in Britain, driven above all by its flagship track (actually rather stuffed and limping) "Heavyweight Champion Of The World", whose radio echo briefly reached our shores too.

In short, this Reverend is no raw beginner, and his record shows quite unequivocally how so-called new rave, with its assorted sticker album of phosphorescent bands (from Klaxons to Foals and New Young Pony Club, via the unspeakable Shitdisco) is progressively shifting its stylistic axis toward the baggy El Dorado of bygone Madchester.

Songs that blow a thick layer of dust and moss off the sermons of the pilgrim fathers Stone Roses, Charlatans, Happy Mondays and Primal Scream, and attempt to rebuild a new church of baggy puritanism, also drawing in the process on some American reinforcements, above all the revived liberation theology of the mystics !!!, Lcd Soundsystem and Rapture. What emerges is a bunch of washed-out pop hosts with vaguely funky edges, in which it's very hard to believe resides the incorruptible body of Rhythm, for the nourishment and salvation of our unredeemed souls.

In short, it doesn't go much beyond a basic pop catechism that fails to pull the sword that "Fools Gold" planted in the stone, and which therefore, barring surprises, is very unlikely to be crowned king of England (and of the world).

In the sacristy you find a bit of everything. But nothing you haven't heard before. Leggy choreographies of dancing synths redolent of New Order ("The State Of Things", "The Machine"), bass lines that swing like thuribles loaded with smoking incense that make your eyes water so much you can't see the grave of fun around which the (funereal) ritual is being officiated ("He Said He Loved Me"), odds and ends and sound effects on a par with mid-level Super Mario Bros., nursery rhymes with virtually harmless psychedelic touches ("Bandits"). On "Open Your Window" it even sounds like listening to Bravery, another band from pop's lost-and-found office (let them at least serve as a warning to anyone who thinks they can be clever in music, because this is the end that awaits them).

There's no shortage of the whispered-vocal slow number either, "Sex With The Ex" (very Arctic Monkeys, "Riot Van" and thereabouts), poised between the ecstasy of the most opiate-addled and distant Brown (Ian) and a Gruff Rhys in the mood for easy theology. Some melodies land harder, "What The Milkman Saw", for instance (yet another illegitimate child of the dense musical concubinage with Arctic Monkeys) or "18-30" (though that crude Lalala...). "Sundown On The Empire", meanwhile, tries to revive Madchester's last (chemical) supper by resorting to the trip-hop sorcery of pagan necromancers Tv On The Radio and Massive Attack, but overall this reverend (the lowercase is now mandatory) fails to write the second Stone Roses album (the real one, the one that never came out, the one not even the Stone Roses themselves managed to write).

Next, then. At this point we'll even accept bishops or cardinals.

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12/11/2007