Reverend & The Makers - 'Heavyweight Champion Of The World'
There was a rumour circulating a while ago that the Arctic Monkeys songs weren't actually written by Alex Turner, and in fact were put together by this shadowy figure called The Reverend. The logic ran that a fresh-faced 19-year-old couldn't possibly be blessed with the sophisticated wordplay and vinegary eye for detail in the Monkeys tunes, and that such lyrics are clearly the work of the a older and wiser man. This, therefore, would make the Monkeys little more than an indie boyband and somehow spoil the goodness of their records.
Sorry, did I say 'logic'? Silly me.
Anyway, it's cobblers, but one listen to this, the first single by that mysterious would-be word-magician, is enough to give you an idea where all the speculation came from. The RevMakers are closer in sound to the disco-funk of Jamiroquai than the rock-funk of them Arctic Monkeys, but the lyric sheet is strikingly similar. It's another roll-call of what goes on in everyday lives, viewed through a deeply sceptical eye, and presented in the kind of tumbledown rhythmic helter-skelter you're more used to hear from rappers than singers.
But where those early Monkeys songs were about going out, getting trollied and hitting someone's fist with your face, the RevMakers are looking to the slighty-older folks for whom this kind of wildness is a distant memory. The folks who've just settled down into a boring job with boring prospects, and got themselves their first flat, and a foot on the property ladder, and who then suddenly look about them and wonder what happened to the plans they had when they were younger. Set to a mournful dirge, this song would be a tragedy, but as it's all funked-up and stroppy, it's more like a call to arms.
And, most importantly, where other songs about the evils of having a proper job and not being in a band can seem like unwarranted sneering at the people who buy the records from the people who want you to buy them, this has a sharp eye for detail which draws you in and makes these characters seem vivid and real. The woman who is scared of getting older and more boring, the man who used to want to be Bruce Lee, the frustated rock star with a poetic gift whose best mates went on to form a world-beating band...
...oh, hang on, that's not someone in the song, that's the singer...
Download: Out now
CD Released: May 28th
(Fraser McAlpine)
Comments
absolute TUNE