Reverse, The - Which Way Out |

The Reverse are Nathan Loughran- guitar/vocals, Sam Hartley- guitar, Teresa Kelly- bass guitar/vocals/piano, Jason Moran- drums. The Reverse is a North London guitar band making an urgent and literate style of indie-rock that’s been likened to “Belle and Sebastian meets Pulp meets Lloyd Cole”. Recorded as the band performed together, to capture the essence of their live sets, Which Way Out moves through energetic rock songs to more delicate acoustic laments, offering nuanced tone shifts through emotional and stylistic ranges. Frontman and lyricist Nathan Loughran’s delivery veers from anger and sarcasm to vulnerability and compassion, unsurprising with influences including iconic purveyors of the raw and laid bare truth, such as Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Which Way Out opens with the fury of the reverb drenched and darkly caustic track ‘Crush My Chest With Your Hate’, which laments a culture of hate and envy . Whilst the sardonic ‘Nobody Likes You, Everybody Hates You’ explores all that divides us in increasingly binary terms, with a deliciously darkly humoured swipe at everyone. ‘Abstract Heart’ is another heavier rock-edged track, to a backdrop of chugging Wire-esque riffs the anti-love song celebrates the broken people destroyed by the less-than-perfect reality of the romantic dream. Elsewhere on the album there’s hints of classic observational song-writing, with ‘Nothing on Telly’ offering a kind of kitchen sink storytelling realism worthy of Pulp. Whilst tracks like ‘Kill Us All’ recall the aforementioned David Devant & His Spirit Wife and The Auteurs with its tongue in cheek misanthropy (“You seem nice, you talk a lot but I don’t need new friends when I hate the ones I’ve got” – Kill Us All). Then there are more fragile and naked moments such as ‘A Vague Arrangement’ and ‘Skimming Stones’, both take Loughran’s laid-bare honesty that runs through the veins of Which Way Out but laced with a gentler, more compassionate touch, aided on the former track by the in