Having now received all four EPs from London’s The Reverse it’s nice to see a band’s sound evolving. The things holding them back is that they have yet to record an album and they do sound rather like the under-achieving Gene. Once again, on ‘My Lifelong Psychological Experiment’, the group display plenty of potential but don’t quite convince on all their tracks.
The first track is once again the highlight. The doleful and articulate nature of the song sees The Reverse attain the level of The Smiths’ songwriting abilities; something which they have so clearly strived for on previous efforts. Perhaps most remarkably is the way frontman Nathan Loughran skilfully works the words of the title into a key part of the vocal melody. ‘Other Boys’ is more generic; its guitar melody is pleasant yet rather throwaway. ‘To The Bridge’ is much better; all the band turning in an energetic and urgent performance with strong key changes between verse and chorus. To end with we have ‘Emily’, a fair to middling quieter track that doesn’t linger long in the memory. So, as always, The Reverse show they have strong songs in the locker but to me they seem stuck in a mid-1990’s rut. However, as they are now working on a new album, this will be an ideal opportunity to prove me wrong.
Web Sites:
The Reverse Official Site
The Reverse MySpace
Further Listening:
The Smiths, Gene, Clearlake, .Sub
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