Gig review: Reverend and the Makers

Jon McClure, aka the Reverend, has a message for his flock and that message is, in the Liam Gallagher parlance, “let’s have it”.

Jon McClure of Reverend and the Makers. Picture: Getty

REVEREND AND THE MAKERS

ABC, GLASGOW

* * *

Move away from the bar area, please, contemplative appreciation of his music is not an option. Well, that’s true enough – there is little worth contemplating in Reverend and the Makers’ music, which is a pick’n’mix pastiche of the danceable indie sounds of the last quarter century, from EMF to Kasabian via Happy Mondays, with obvious echoes of superior bands such as Oasis and Arctic Monkeys on the likes of Shine A Light and Different Trains.

Originality was not an issue for the pogoing lads at the front leading the customary “here we f***ing go” chant and they were rewarded with a set which only broke its samey pace once for a mediocre acoustic number before running straight back to the cover of their biggest hit Heavyweight Champion Of The World.

Reverend and the Makers are far from heavyweight, except perhaps in McClure’s head, but his enthusiasm and energy, matched by his bandmates, did mean that this gig was delivered as if to a field of partying festivalgoers – and then followed by the equivalent of the after-hours campfire session out on the street afterwards.

And credit where it is due, they did send the audience home terrace-singing the hookline of closing number Silence Is Talking – even if said hookline had been lifted wholesale from War’s Low Rider.

Seen on 04.03.14