Revere- The Escape Artists

It was with the expectation I would fully hate Revere, an eight piece hailing from London and styled as the next Sigur Rós, that I reluctantly agreed to review their new single The Escape Artist.
Having smacked the CD into the player I sat eagerly ready to pick apart the musical aspirations of these young upstarts who had the audacity to compare themselves to the mighty Arcade Fire (or at least their management did).
The first two minutes of the song only increased my smugness, the slow plodding pace of the piano combined with a rather dull voice certainly lacking the desperation of Win Butler (Arcade Fire) or the fragile quality of Jónsi Birgisson (Sigur Rós) that it seemed to want to imitate. Yes, I was in my element.
However my arrogance was all at once shattered as the music suddenly changed direction, it became faster, braver, more confident and what followed can only be described as a ‘Muse style epic.’ The lyrics got sillier, the amount of instruments increased tenfold and it all went on for far too long (the album version is a full 7 minutes. Yet for all that I found my head nodding and eyes widening. I was being drawn into the song and there was nothing I could do to stop it and as the violins got louder and the choir started I had to admit to being well and truly beaten and to add insult to injury I had loved every minute of it.

Review by Katherine Greenfield