At Reverend & Makers (CD)

2012 album from the Sheffield Indie rock band led by singer/songwriter John McLure. Great pop music can be many things, it can be escapist, euphoric, and it can be about love and loss. It can also be about the everyday, the magic in the mundane, and the soundtrack to real life - a modern urban folk music. It takes a special talent to make magic out of the kitchen sink, to tell the story of the real world with an intimate touch that doesn't sound patronizing. John McLure made his name with this kind of writing and the new album sees the band return with their most concise and perfect work yet. By deliberately swerving the politics that have dominated his thinking in the past John McLure has, conversely, made his most political record yet. Like the soundtrack to a film of his home town, the album is aural reportage on the everyday, the big and the little stories of a northern city in the grand tradition of fellow Yorkshire men such as Pulp and Arctic Monkeys.