Revere

London-based eight-piece band Revere are really starting to turn heads with their large-scale, epic, sonically mesmerising arrangements and ambitious live performances. We get the lowdown from singer Stephen Ellis, guitarist Jonathan Fletcher and violinist Ellie Wilson.

Musical life really started in earnest for Revere a few years ago when Stephen Ellis, Jonathan Fletcher and bassist Andrew Hawke trooped over to Phoenix Studios in Wembley to record a handful of acoustic songs they’d been working on. Right from the off, the group’s three principal songwriters had the kind of epic sonic ambitions that most new bands on the circuit will never even consider five or 10 years down the line. After advertising for “as many musicians as we could put down on the EP” and finding the right people to help scale up their arrangements, the future make-up of Revere was sealed. A few of the musicians that appeared on the EP started contacting Stephen, Jonathan and Andrew asking whether they were ever going to perform the tracks live, and it wasn’t long before Revere evolved into a proper eight-piece band, although they do still play scaled-down acoustic gigs with various formations.

With the full band now boasting trumpet, glockenspiel, cello and violin players in addition to guitars, keys and drums, Revere’s recent performances and recordings have led to them being tipped for the top by critics, DJs and music fans alike. The band are about to release their fourth single on their own label, Albino Recordings, and have just finished recording their debut album.

Jonathan Fletcher: “Basically, there are three songwriters in the band, which is Stephen, myself and Andy, the bass player. We come up with the bare bones of the songs, get to the point where between the three of us we’re happy the way things are going, and then present it to the rest of the band. Usually, songs take a lot of unexpected turns.”

Stephen Ellis: “It takes a lot of time as well, but the end result is always worth it. Obviously, with eight people, you’ve got to work out the writing so it’s not just everyone clamouring for their own voice. I think as a band we have learned to be as diplomatic as possible, and also I guess what we’ve learnt more as musicians is how to take things out rather than putting everything in.

“The way we used to do it was bringing in nearly finished products to the rest of the band to arrange, but it’s becoming more of a thing now where we work our own formulas and methods of doing things into it to create more interesting results. Like starting with a violin idea or a string idea or even a drum idea, then moving from there and seeing where we can take it.”

SE: “The first one after we recorded the acoustic EP — when we first tried things out — we had quite a bizarre line-up. We had two drummers, a harp player, who’s now playing for Florence And The Machine, and also I was on acoustic guitar. We played at a venue in Putney called the Half Moon. We’d obviously been gigging long before the acoustic EP in solo form and things like that, but it was the first time we’d really got such an incredible response from the audience. They all seemed really into what we were trying to do, and we saw it as a way forward.”

Ellie Wilson: “Last year, we had three absolutely amazing gigs. One was at Standon Calling festival. We all came off stage and every single member of the band was going, ‘Wow, that was just amazing!’ It was electrifying, the audience were really behind it and we played really well.

“Then there was obviously the Union Chapel gig, because the atmospheric environment that we were playing in was absolutely amazing. We had 500 to 600 people in the crowd and there was a 30-piece choir. And then we played Glastonbury Festival last year”

SE: “We were picked as one of the finalists for Glastonbury Unsigned. And just to get that kind of recognition, with the amount of bands that are entering into something like that, was great. I’d never been to Glastonbury up until that point, because I’d always told myself the first time I went to Glastonbury I wanted to be on the bill rather than a customer, so it was a quite nice one to go and do, definitely!”

SE: “We’d played most of the venues in London that we could play on the unsigned circuit. Due to the size of the band, we need to play gigs in venues where the stage is large enough, and someone had flagged up the Union Chapel a while ago as a venue that we should really check out. So we decided to basically book it ourselves. The venue was really encouraging, really behind us doing this and happy to take the risk on it.

“We basically started promoting by word of mouth. Then I got a call from a journalist on an Internet magazine, who asked me how we got the gig there, and I said we’d booked it ourselves, and he said he really wanted to get behind and support that kind of thing because it was quite an ambitious thing for an unsigned band to do. He started writing about it on his page and I’m sure that contributed, but for the major part it was just word of mouth. People that’d been following the band for the past two years really wanted to come and support us for getting into such a big venue and they turned up in their numbers. It was such a wonderful evening!”

SE: “We do a lot of gigs on the acoustic circuit and we always try and make something about the gig stand out that little bit more to make it that bit more memorable for the audience. Quite often, we’ll hide people in the audience of a small acoustic venue and they’ll suddenly stand up and start playing along with the band! For the Union Chapel, we wanted to take that to the next level and really shock people, and it was a beautiful moment for the last song to just start playing this song and then suddenly this choir stands up, turns round, faces the audience and starts singing. People don’t forget things like that!”

SE: “Some haven’t gone so well, and quite often it’s to do with the sound. It’s a real battle with some venues to accept that its OK for a band to have this many members and to be as ambitious as we want to be with the music we’re creating. We’ve had to learn how to approach venues, making it as easy as possible for them to get our sound right, because, generally, for me, it doesn’t really matter how many people are in the audience — it’s about getting the right sort of sound so we can put across what we’re trying to put across.

“On the flip side of that, there are a lot of really good live engineers in venues around London who come up to us afterwards and thank us, because they see so many three-piece or four-piece bands night after night. It’s really nice for them to be able to show what they can actually do on the desk, and have the challenge of dealing with a violin or a cello or a harp or a glockenspiel amongst all of the other racket that we make!”

SE: “I think with support slots, especially. Not too many bands I guess are self-confident enough to want to have an eight-piece band supporting them. I don’t want to sound arrogant in that we can upstage them; it’s just that the sheer size of numbers is always going to be a visual kind of thing. It is problematic, but that’s not to say we never get offered the slots. We also go out to support people in smaller line-ups, like more recently I went out to the US to support Al Stewart on a string of dates with a singer called Gabby Young.”

EW: “There are some cases where we literally cannot fit on stages. There are some venues that are totally ruled out. We started off with half the band off the stage and the other half on the stage, but we do try and avoid that.”

SE: “Another part of our live stage show is that we use visuals and various different things happen. I think sometimes the visuals, which can be slightly more challenging and equally beautiful in places, can leave people generally overwhelmed. People just feel like they’ve really been through something, rather than just watching a band play through a set of songs. They feel they’ve actually come somewhere with us. I think if you can get that kind of reaction, that kind of emotional response out of an audience, it’s pretty incredible.”

SE: “One of the main things for us, in making these videos and working with this choir, is that we’re really into building a community around the band of people that have as much to offer as the people in the band have to offer musically but in other ways. The way we met Ryan Pearce [who acts as the band’s DJ and is also behind the visual projections at their gigs] is he came to a gig and offered his services, and we’ve also met various photographers and artists who’ve provided artwork in the past in much the same way. We’re really keen on breaking down this boundary between the band on stage and the audience, and if people want to contact Revere or feel they have something to offer Revere, then they shouldn’t hesitate to get in touch.”

Visit www.myspace.com/reverelondon if you’d like to get in contact with Revere or would like more information. The band’s fourth single, ‘As The Radars Sleep’, will be released at the end of June on Albino Recordings. 0

Revere

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