Great pop music can be many things, it can be escapist, euphoric, it can be about love and loss. It can also be about the everyday, the magic in the mundane, the soundtrack to real life - a modern urban folk music. It takes a special talent to make magic out of the kitchen sink, to tell the story of the real world with an intimate touch that doesn’t sound patronising. John McLure of Reverend and the Makers made his name with this kind of writing and the new album sees the band return with their most concise and perfect work yet. If Shane Meadows could made great contemporary pop records mashing the rush of indie with the hedonistic pulse of electronics and dance then this what they would sound like. The album title is ‘@reverend_makers’ because, as McLure explains, ‘the songs the little situations I see living in Sheffield in 2012. Nothing seems to sum up the present and the times we live in more than the @ symbol.’ By deliberately swerving the politics that have dominated his thinking in the past John McLure has, conversely, made his most political record yet. Like the soundtrack to a film of his home town, the album is aural reportage on the everyday, the big and the little stories of a northern city in the grand tradition of fellow Yorkshire men such as Pulp and Arctic Monkeys. McLure is one of the most engaging modern musicians. Sheffield bred, he is six foot plus of pure high IQ attitude and passion and a key player in the city's recent musical revival. Breaking through in 2007 with the top ten hit ‘Heavyweight Champion of the World’ from their first album 'The State of Things' and consolidating it with the second 2009 studio album, 'A French Kiss in the Chaos' his band’s mix of indie guitars and electronics updated the form adding heartfelt vocals and a social consciousness rare in modern music. After a three year hiatus, ‘@reverend_makers’ takes this a stage further with every song sounding like a 21st century pop classic, marrying indie melodies with the sparse electronics that dominate his home city - it’s the sound of bedsits cranking their music, soundclashing across the city night. McLure built a reputation as one of the few modern musicians capable of social and political comment and is in big demand around the world for his forthright opinions. Musically in the past few years, feeling that a modern musician has to be engaged with the current musical debate he has been on the run from indie - working with the Reverend Sound System whose beats based sound was quite different from his original muse and a highly effective reflection on urban culture. Last year though, worn out from always leading the pack, he took some time out and decided to return to his roots by putting Reverend And The Makers back together. The resulting album is the sound of someone who has lived the dream, had the success, the hit albums, traveled the world, played the stadiums but is still fascinated by his own roots. The magnetic draw of the north and its powerfully unique musical cities like Sheffield with their experimental pop heritage tempered by a blunt social realism is at the heart of some of the best British pop.