Comparatively speaking, Rotherham appears in the news more than most British towns of an equivalent size. And much of that news is not good. Much of it is representative of poverty, social disenfranchisement, and the ugly face of flag-waving Britain. But self-released, 2020s grass roots indie rockers The Reytons offer a reminder of working class community power, a band who hark back to the days when the only way out of big city estates was through football and pop.
Their last couple of albums (of four, including this one), made it to No.1 and No.2 in the UK album charts, respectively. This quartet aren’t some music-journo-acclaimed-for-five-minutes flash-in-the-pan. In 2024 they put on a 20,000-capacity concert in Rotherham’s Clifton Park, the biggest music event in the city since T-Rex in 1971. They have a devoted following. Listening to A Love Letter to a Broken Town, it’s easy to hear why. They offer caustically on-point kitchen sink snapshots of social deprivation.
The first thing many will think upon hearing this is, “They sound just like Arctic Monkeys!”. Indeed, they do but, then again, Arctic Monkeys haven’t sounded like Arctic Monkeys for a decade-and-a-half, so it’s easy to see why many welcome this combination of driving guitars and northern lyrical bite.
The album’s lyrics are a vibrant tonic compared to the vapidity of most contemporary indie. Try this from “Buskers Paradise”: “So now he's lost all choices, left to pitch up near the station/Between the pub that's long shut down and the British Art Foundation/Where pensioners move slowly and protesters bully migrants/With artwork on the shore of the shops depicting violence/And he's all alone”.
There’s wordage to match that all the way through, on-the-nose but righteous, from the bitter celebration of pub piss-ups “241” (ie, two-for-one) to the “Disco 2000”-ish reflectiveness of “Wish You Were There” to the scrapping, hedonistic violence of “Best Night of his Life”.
For this writer, the way the choruses sometimes drift into mainstream pop-rock territory undermines the bite of about a third of it. But the kids don’t care about that sort of thing. In fact, they love it. This is a vital, battering, fast-rockin’ snapshot of this country’s ragged edges.
Below: Watch the video for "The Best Night of his Life" by The Reytons
