The Reytons

The Reytons latest LP arrives almost precisely a year on from their last. Ballad Of A Bystander stays true to the in your face brash rock sound that a Reytons fanbase has come to love. This album involves a lot more old elements than new.

Perhaps the most notable new element is shades of Jonny Yerrell’s old rapping career showing glimmers in some tracks. The general safe approach to this record may come at a cost to other music critics labelling it as bland and unadventurous. However, at the time of writing, the album sits at number two in the midweek album charts, and at the time of publishing, perhaps it may be number one.

The album kicks off with Adrenaline, a track that is named after what it is, a loud and chaotic opener which repeats the title as the chorus to really get their message across. This isn’t the first time The Reytons have done this with their albums; having the heaviest track as the opener to prepare you for the record, almost like going to a Reytons show. This is an approach which perhaps engages The Reytons faithful; a method that encapsulates their mantra that their hardcore fanbase wear like a badge of honour ‘no label, no backing, all Reytons’. They may see this as two fingers up to the industry, however, it is tracks like this which sparks little surprise and enthusiasm when you see a Reytons release.

The Rotherham outfit have never shied away from wanting to sound like their musical influences, almost wanting to take the northern gauntlet that some bands like Arctic Monkeys have held with such pride, much like the lyric that features in their most streamed song on Spotify On The Back Burner “And everybody round here’s got a cousin or a mate who’s best friends with Alex Turner”. But as their career progresses and their reputation grows, they seem to try to get this point across more and more blatantly, to the point now that anyone who’s deep enough into the album to reach the track entitled 2006 is very much aware of this. 2006 is a reflective track of missing “them MySpace days” and delivered in a way that makes it sound like the present day is 2076 and The Reytons are in their rock and roll retirement home preaching to the youth of today. And in fact, they have so much to say about the year that it is basically Reytons frontman Jonny Yerrell rapping, which some people might not know that he in fact was a rapper under the name Jay Mya.

But it’s this almost spoken word delivery which is the shining light of the album, because it’s The Reytons finally finding a sound which makes them unique. Not Today Mate and Let Me Breathe deliver that. They are songs with verses that grab interest; not lyrically but rhythmically. They are melodies that can have anyone bobbing their head and humming along, which can be quite hard to capture in a verse for songwriters. Lyrically, this album is what you come to expect, the use of third-person perspective depicting some sort of anarchy features in most tracks.

But regardless of a generally expected Reytons return, does it matter? They clearly love this sound, their last album went to number one in the UK Charts and if the midweek entries are anything to go by, this one may do the same. This latest entry is generally the same blend of previous releases but in a strange way, having no record label allows a band to stay in the same sounding box if that’s what they desire. This formula has become well and truly the band's signature dish, but if people want it and it sells records, should a band change? We may not look back at this record in years to come as one of the greats, but certainly a display of the character that The Reytons are.