Revere : Feature

Brits have an obsession with genre, especially when it comes to music. We love boxing everything up and filing the most abstract bands with other acts whose attributes can only be connected, at best, via the most tenuous links.

In a way, this is a complete stifle to anyone being accepted as even partially original, but it sets the precedent for trends, scenes and fashion across most areas of British cultural life. It’s a brilliant way to keep ourselves in a musical comfort zone and become aficionado’s of a particular strain of musical life.

Sometimes a band defies this model and in doing so bypasses people’s ability to drop people in boxes. Pigeon holing Revere: an eight-piece band of all ages, whose multitudinous array of influences stretch from blues, huge classical soundscapes and emotional ethereal lyrics, is like telling Radiohead they play rock by numbers.

The appeal of Revere is they are not a confusing band, but an incredibly complex and exhilarating one. Theirs is a sound so full, exhilarating and emotionally charged, you are completely involved from the off. The depth of the music would be enough, but the enviably tight sound of the nine-piece is stretched further by the vigour of the performance itself.

Bursting with the depth of their sound, you feel every last musical contortion - as the band clearly does too.  Dramatic bodily movements, shaking instruments and passionate expressions mean during the entire performance you could be forgiven for thinking the band have consumed one too many Red Bulls and need to repel the energetic demon. With a band that features glockenspiel, violin cello, trumpet, guitars, keys and drums you hope this would be the case.

With a music so layered and intense, lead guitarist Jonathon Fletcher explains how this manifests itself in recording process. 

“All the songs are written by John and Stephen. There is a hell of a lot of trial and error to get all those pieces working together. It’s like writing for an orchestra rather than churning out a pop song in one session. It takes a large number of rehearsals to perfect."

Lead singer Stephen Ellis agrees: “We’ve shouted and screamed at each other. It also comes across in the music. When you are creating music that deals with so much tension and emotion and when you’ve got that many people in a small room for a long time playing very loud music, it’s bound to get heated at times. I would be worried if it was going smoothly because in a positive way it reflects just how passionate the members are about the music.”   

It’s a marvel to behold. The unison is astounding. The sound is absolutely bursting. At times it’s delicate, at others a full pronged obliteration.  You get the impression they’ve got a bit to get off their chest and understatement isn’t really going to cut it. Yet theirs is a totally organic performance, there is no whiff of pre-conceived scene pandering bullshit within any of these songs, perhaps a result of the band’s less than pre-conceived origins.

“We started with three of us”, lead vocalist Stephen Ellis explains, “myself John and the bass player Andy. Initially we started recording an acoustic EP and in order to broaden the sound we started asking random musicians to come in and put down parts - piano, violin cello etc. Then a few of those people started asking when we were going to play the stuff we had recorded. It was quite random really.

“I actually met Kat, the cellist, on the tube just carrying her cello. Asked her to check us out and if she liked it she should get in touch.

“Then we started playing with a massive line up and at first it was a massive learning curve of how actually you play with that many people.”

As is often the case with such an emotionally charged sound, those who love Revere are as passionate about the songs as the band is. The video for their song 'Skin' was shot with the financial help of their fans after they posted an appeal to help make the video on their message board. The brilliant video for 'The Escape Artist' was also half paid for by fans. It’s this connection with their audience that gives them a real intimacy not often sought or afforded by many other artists, as Stephen explains:

“For the next single called 'As the Radars Sleep' we want to use the fans time and talents rather than their money. For the next video we are hoping they will be more directly involved. We are coming up with some ideas we are going to throw out there soon. We really like to break down the barrier between the audience and the band. It’s very important for us as a band to build up the community around us and the whole DIY ethic of you don’t need industry or a big company to succeed, when you can use all these people around you who have talent.”

The multi-stranded talent of working with a nine-piece translates itself into other shows the band perform, where they strip the sound down to acoustic levels. This is something Stephen enjoys doing to offer their fans another side to their complex character.

“I like the fact people can see us as full band and go away emotionally exhausted and the next night it’s all about sitting down and pondering the music and getting to know the audience.”

Tonight The Cube cinema is treated to a theatrical explosion of strings, soaring sounds and imagery from their videos. It’s hard to remain seated to such an energetic sound and it’s almost like you want to join in the tirade.  Yet the tirade is always the right side of controlled, like it’s flirting with going over the edge but never quite reaches it. They are better for it.

In recording their debut album, the band have been trying to harness the sound of their belting live performances into a single album, something that has seen them take a much different approach to recording as Stephen explains:

“We have been trying to record more as a live band to try and generate the sound of our gigs. When we were recording before we’d do all our parts and we wouldn’t see each other for days.”

It’s this new approach to their sound being correctly harnessed that has got the band excited. Taking home even a small slice of tonight’s performance would give your speakers a real treat and work out in equal measure.

The box marked Revere sits on a shelf of its own.

Revere’s album should be out in early September

Words: Thomas Frost

Photos: Jake Applebee

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