Reverend And The Makers - The State of Things

Like The Fratellis last year, Reverend And The Makers sparked a wildfire of excitement over their debut album months ago. It doesn't take much brain-wracking to reason why: friendly with Sheffield peers the Arctic Monkeys; purveyors of similarly candid dancefloor indie; and in Jon McClure, a bandleader cocksure and media-savvy enough to accept the title 'Reverend'. Three tracks into The State of Things, it's all going to plan. Kasabian and Primal Scream producer Jagz Kooner lays out a familiar synthetic backdrop over which McClure rams home his version of Cool Britannia gone sour with all the swagger of a young Ian Brown. But it soon unravels as it becomes clear that McClure isn't the John Cooper Clarke punk-poet he'd have us believe; instead he dishes out uninspired, sub-Skinner vignettes of twenty-something normality. It's still more relevant than most of the self-avowedly 'oop-Nawth' bands out there, but it's no work of ecclesiastical genius. And 18-30, an unapologetic homage to the eponymous package holiday, is simply unforgivable. [Nick Mitchell]