Reverend and The Makers live at Carlisle Brickyard 1st March 2010

Jon McClure and his backing band kicked off their UK tour at a sold out Brickyard in Carlisle!

Opening up were local lads Rubakai who managed to perform well considering most of the stage was taken up by The Rev's equipment and instruments.

Their sold indie rock was very well played, it's obvious the band can play their instruments to a high level and their frontman was very energetic on stage and done a great job of keeping the sell out crowd entertained with a strong singing voice and numerous jokes on stage mocking Carlisle. They seemed to be more influenced by older bands like Oasis and The Stone Roses as opposed to newer bands like Arctic Monkeys but a few of the songs, especially their finale had a groove element reminiscent of Happy Mondays. Good warm up band who managed to get a lot of the crowd watching them as opposed to chatting or standing at the bar!

After quite a long change over the Rev and his band fought their way on stage through the audience and opened up with Silence is Talking and then picking up the pace with the clubby The State of Things which got the crowd dancing. The Rev is a great performer on stage and he knows how to work the crowd plus he was making a lot of jokes in between songs which were well received.

The set list was almost the entire A French Kiss in the Chaos and a lot from The State of Things. The newer material sounded a lot fuller on stage as his backing band were a 6 piece complete with a brass section and a female backing vocalist. It seemed to make a lot of the dance oriented material sound a bit weak in comparison but favourites like Heavyweight Champion of The World, Open Your Window, Miss Brown, He Said He Loved Me and the encore of The End and The Machine ensured everyone left smiling.

This was a great gig and I hope the sell out crowd encourage the venue to book more big name bands like these.