ThirtyTwo… If in doubt, name your album after your age
Review: Reverend and The Makers – ThirtyTwo
Published on February 12th, 2014 | Jonny Abrams
It’s easy to be sarcastic about Reverend and The Makers, whose new album ThirtyTwo is almost upon us – so we will be.
I mean, as ‘necessary’ goes, ThirtyTwo is about as necessary as the euthanising of that giraffe in Denmark – and if you think that’s in bad taste, have a listen to some of this guff.
Opener “Detonator” finds ‘the Reverend’ Jon McClure seeing how many rhymes he can come up with for ‘detonator’, which is of course loads, as there are loads – it feels a bit like a Sesame Street game and sounds like a northern Example, the latter of which is without doubt the more substantial diss.
“I Spy” is not a cover of the classic number by fellow Sheffielders Pulp but there’s a sniff of a decent tune to it, not to mention a vaguely fun, Blur-ishly bratty “la la la” bit – alas, the straightforward club beat and tacky synth bass feels cynically engineered towards the kind of mass appeal it’s destined never to engender.
Looking for some bogstandard ska-punk to soundtrack your £1-a-shot student indie night? Get on “The Devil’s Radio”, which admittedly carries a decent-ish tagline in “Gossip is the Devil’s radio”, although the line “All that could be done’s been done before” from “Nostalgia” is someone undermined by the song’s resemblance to a cross between Ace of Base and, oh yes, The Ordinary Boys.
It feels like Ringo Starr should be narrating “Different Trains” (“There’s no need to worry, you don’t need to hurry, we’re two different trains / We arrive into the station, the same destination, in different ways”), while “Don’t you wanna go outside…in the sunshine…sometimes?” from “Time” is practically an invitation to throw off your headphones and go do something worthwhile instead.
“Play Me” gets surprisingly stirring, before any clawed-back kudos is promptly flushed away like so many turds by the particularly Examplesque “The Only One”. There’s so little of interest going on in the music of ThirtyTwo that it’s actually quite fascinating.
Thirty-two is McClure’s age by the way, just so you can gauge the level of creativity at play here.
ThirtyTwo will be released on February 24th through Cooking Vinyl.
You can buy ThirtyTwo on iTunes and on Amazon.
Rocksucker says: Thirty-Two Quails out of One Hundred Thousand!
About the Author
Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.
