The Reytons: What’s Rock and Roll? album review — spirited indie revivalism

“No backing, no label, all Reytons,” is the motto of the band on course to top this week’s UK album chart. They are The Reytons, a fourpiece from South Yorkshire who have come up the old-fashioned way, through gigging and word of mouth. They play a style of music that boomed and then fell from fashion in the 2000s — the indie rock that emerged in the aftermath of Britpop with the likes of Arctic Monkeys and Hard-Fi.

By the late 2000s, so many bands had mushroomed around this scene that it was mockingly called “landfill indie”. Detractors made jokes about Razorlight and predicted the death of guitar music. But the last rites were wrongly applied. Surging, big-hearted songs that you can jump around to, as if your team has just scored the winning goal, remain a big draw. Hence the popularity of recent practitioners such as Catfish and the Bottlemen and The Lathums.

The Reytons continue the tradition. As though redeeming the travestied term “indie” — which turned into a vague catch-all for guitar music in the 2000s — they proudly advertise themselves as being truly independent. A small Manchester label released their debut album, 2021’s Kids off the Estate. Its follow-up What’s Rock and Roll? is self-released.

Their local identity is flagged in their name, which stands for “reyt ’uns” (Yorkshire lingo for “right ones”). Their music sounds uncannily similar to Arctic Monkeys before the latter decamped from Sheffield to Los Angeles. Singer Jonny Yerrell cries the album’s opening words “Let’s all be famous” with the sarcastic vim that Alex Turner once mustered. Bassist Lee Holland, guitarist Joe O’Brien and drummer Jamie Todd play wiry, hooky riffs and brawny rhythms. Choruses push their way forwards with elbows-out, see-you-down-the-front energy.

Gigs are the best place to experience these heaving, jostling, lively songs. On record, the cold light of day occasionally intrudes, as when Yerrell’s slice-of-life commentaries about fake digital lives and feral youth shade into the harrumphing tone of a pub grumbler. But the album has commitment and drive. It dashes by at a spirited gallop, a grassroots act of indie revivalism.

★★★☆☆

‘What’s Rock and Roll?’ is self-released