Credit: Found On Internet

John McClure is not a happy man. You’d think, as the Reverend leading his gang of Makers, with his top ten hits, sell-out tours, and much column-inched friendship with Arctic Monkeys, might have something to smile about. But there he is, sneering away, mouthing off at Johnny Borrell (okay, so that’s a worthy pursuit), and putting his surly Yorkshire vowels to a dozen tracks on the debut album from Reverend and The Makers, ‘The State Of Things’.

McClure has a poetic turn of phrase, with each song a story, squeezed into three minutes of post-Ian Brown danceable indie-electro. Sometimes it works, like of radio-friendly fist-pumper, ‘Heavyweight Champion Of The World’, but then on others it comes across as a ham-fingered attempted to squeeze too many words into too small a space, like the rumour-mill tawdriness of ‘What The Milkman Saw’.

But when it works, it works better than a bonfire made entirely out of fireworks – 100% bang without any of the pre-explosive fizzle brought about from too many damp twigs. ‘Sex With The Ex’ sounds like a low-key lost Pulp classic, albeit with a Yorkshire accent thicker than Jarvis Cocker’s by a depth that would take serious scientific equipment to qualify.

Not as good as either he or the more excitable members of the music press would have you imagine, McClure and co.’s album is mentally draining to listen to all in one go. Play almost any track off this record on its own and its a better than average slice of danceable beat-backed indie – its when you put them all together, the unrelenting insistence and ceaseless pulse start to wear you down. After 40 minutes of McClure’s tales of Sheffield working class exasperation, it’s somehow managed to be an album that’s less than the sum of its parts.

‘The State Of Things’ is out on Wall Of Sound on September 17. The band tour the UK from October 1 – click here for more details.