A surprisingly soulful new album from The Reverend.
How do you cope as a band when your first single goes ballistic and nothing else you release ever quite matches the same response from the listening public? ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World’ has 42 million listens on Spotify. Their next best performer hasn’t quite hit 5 million. Well, if you are Reverend And The Makers you just carry on following your instincts and your interests and release music you firmly believe in. There have been various shifts and experiments from John McClure, the Reverend, as they have carried on over nineteen years. Previous album, Heatwave In The Cold North, marked a real shift into soulful tune making, a long way from the frenetic indie of their earlier work. What has stayed consistent is the attention to character. McClure has always had a knack for making the subject of a song come to life from the briefest of sketches a three minute song will allow. He also specialises in people who feel genuine, real situations from real lives.
Is This How Happiness Feels? continues and builds upon the soul and emotion of that previous effort, almost pitching into R & B at times. If you picture Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse’s Valerie, the sung moments from Plan B’s masterpiece The Defamation of Strickland Banks and some funk-groove songs about romance you will be getting to where this album lands.
This is some of their most commercial music to date despite equally being quite retro. That perhaps speaks to the current scene where the likes of Raye, Laufey and Celeste can all draw huge crowds with retro stylings. ‘Haircut’ sets the scene with its toe tapping chorus. Why is Line of Duty’s Vicky McClure on singing duties sounding like Lily Allen? Well, because she is a good friend of the Reverend and actually holds a tune really well. The shared surname is nothing more than a coincidence that is probably why they got talking in the first place.
‘Late Night Phonecall’ is one of five singles released in advance, a number that points to their confidence in the work and the changing nature of music releases. It is one of many tracks on here focusing on falling on love, being in love, sharing a connection with another human being. It has the full big band treatment in the background.
With The Lottery Winners having been supporting Robbie Williams extensively over the last year a collaboration seems inevitable. For him to pop up on ‘F***ed Up’ is more of a surprise here, though Robbie does love a collaboration. He has guested on tracks for everyone from The Pet Shop Boys to Soft Play. It is a fun, playful little track built around a sort of surf guitar sound.
By the time ‘Want You So Bad’ is half way through you will have been 100% convinced that McClure is going big on the sensitive lover man vibes on this album. The surprises keep on coming. ‘Crying Over You’ and ‘Who Cares’ have old school Hank Marvin guitar lines running through them. The title track and following song ‘Laid Back’ are the most overtly R & B tracks, complete with funk-bass and shimmery hit keys and chimes. It is a long way from the artist who was being encouraged to copy the Arctic Monkeys after their fellow Sheffield band blew up, not that McClure ever paid attention to the record company noise. Having guested on ‘You Again’ can they really get away with a track called ‘UFO’ on this album? Well, yes… it is a very different beast to The Lottery Winners effort of the same name. That was about feeling like you don’t fit in. Here, it is genuinely about wandering out into space… though makes references to the troubles of our times. “How’d we ever get this far, when everyone is miles apart?”
An album like this has a serious risk of tipping into cliché. It is for the most part avoided through the sheer commitment of everyone involved. The backing singers are giving it 100%, as are the string section and the big band elements, when they are bought in. McClure has always had a strong voice with distinctive character. You get the feeling he really enjoyed making this album, following his own path as always.
Essential Tracks: ‘Haircut,’ ‘Late Night Phone Call,’ ‘F***ed Up,’ ‘Crying Over You,’ ‘UFO,’ and ‘Forever.’
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