Reverend and the Makers

Fri 17th Jul, 2009 in Features

Jon McClure has for years been trying to reconcile his music career with his politics. Last year, disillusioned with the primacy of profit in the music industry and distortions in the media, McClure declared his intention to leave the band he routinely fronts, Reverend and the Makers.

Luckily for his fans, McClure has channelled his frustration in other, more positive, directions. In June, Reverend and the Makers released an online track, Manifesto/People Shapers (also on their new album, A French Kiss in the Chaos ) in response to the success of the far-right British National Party in the recent European elections.

By releasing Manifesto/People Shapers online, the song was straight away disseminated to a global audience. In the “modern era, what would have taken six months before,” says McClure, is everywhere “two hours later. Immediately kids have an anthem.”

It remains the case, however, that more Britons than ever before voted for a far-right political party with an anti-immigration agenda whose policies have been called racist. McClure echoes many observers who attribute the BNP’s electoral gain to the recently exposed woeful behaviour of Britain’s parliamentarians. “People are sick of politicians, so they are turning to radicals,” he says.

Bigger and more ambitious than releasing a protest song online is McClure’s other online experiment, called Instigate Debate. It was only after I spoke with McClure that I realised the magnitude and novelty of his idea. I think the website provides the best description of the project:

“Whoever you are, wherever you are, if you spot a public figure, any of the wonderful people who regularly appear in our fantastic magazines, newspapers or even on our tellies, try not to gush, or faint. Instead, ask them a question, and film the response. There is a list of suggested questions below, and on www.instigatedebate.com. What do you want to know? How can we find out?

“Instigate Debate make a promise to everyone who submits a video: a group of some of the UK’s best musicians – Jon McClure, Tom Clarke (The Enemy), Carl Barat (Dirty Pretty Things), Drew McConnell (Babyshambles) and other friends – will play a set in your living room, what the hell, your garden, for you and your friends. They will do as many of these gigs as humanly possible. No matter where you are in the UK, they will come to you.”

McClure has strong feelings about celebrity culture and its hold on the public imagination, and Instigate Debate is part of his stance against it. “The bubble of vacuous celebrity bullshit is bursting,” he recently – œTweeted’ from Glastonbury. It may be an optimistic claim, but McClure sees Instigate Debate as a “new punk rock”; as a new generational movement.

He certainly speaks with verve about the project. “It’s up to us…it’s not a vanity project,” he says. “We need to take the same path together and make good rock music. When we’re in our rocking chairs we’re not going to care if we have millions of dollars. It’s about making a difference now.”

Amid this political engagement, McClure and his bandmates have recorded the second Reverend and the Makers album, A French Kiss in the Chaos. The new album differs from their first, in that it’s “not like an Arctic Monkeys’ album that girls listen to at bus stops on their iPods.” It could be then that McClure’s reinvigorated engagement with the world has added gravity to his music. And according to Twitter, the third album is on the way.

McClure’s next trip to Australia will likely be part of a Reverend and the Makers tour. “I’m going to bring the band out and do gigs and gigs and gigs,” he says. “I want to live here. It’s paradise. It’s wonderful.”

McClure sees a parallel between Australians and people from his hometown of Sheffield in northern England. Sheffielders are honest and down-to-earth in a manner similar to Australians, says McClure. “I love the people. I think I have a natural affinity with them, because Australians are straight to the point. They don’t take any bullshit.”

A French Kiss In The Chaos is out 27 July through Liberator Music.