Photo Credit: Rich Goodwin
With their previous album, What’s Rock and Roll?, Rotherham, England band the Reytons answered their own question: taking cues from Blur, the Arctic Monkeys, and other essential Britpop as well as classic punk, the Reytons offered up a tight, kinetic, in-your-face but fun thirty-five minutes and twelve tracks of what was probably one of the best indie rock albums of 2023 (those in their homeland obviously thought so too, as the record went to No.1 in the U.K.).
Coming a year – almost to the day – later is the Reytons’ third album, Ballad of a Bystander. While neither is as good as What’s Rock and Roll? nor offering any real noticeable evolution in the band’s sound, the album still stands on its own merits reasonably well. Mostly. Opening cut “Adrenaline” at first appears (or perhaps threatens) to tell a different story, with this synthy, bass-heavy Trent Reznor-like excursion. While it’s good for any band to step out of their comfort zone, this one track does not make the idea of an entire Reytons album that sounds like this seem particularly appealing.
However, “World’s Greatest Actor,” definitely sounds more like a throwback to What’s Rock and Roll?, even if not quite measuring up to most of the selections from that album. We arrive just in time to “Market Street,” which by this point in the album is already a fairly needed lighter moment, a hook-y cut with just a hint of emo. “Let Me Breathe,” then, is another tight rock track displaying what the Reytons do best, featuring innovative audio drops that are perfectly timed.
The garage-toned “Not Today Mate” does at least partially reflect its very British-sounding title with a Blur-esque talk-sing verse along with a groovy Sixties-ish pop chorus, this time definitely more Monkees than (Artic) Monkeys. The band does even more with a Sixties pop influence on “What She Won’t Do,” even if the lyrics are a bit uncharacteristically generic for this band (“What she won’t do for love // If there’s not enough, enough”). The comfortably uptempo “Listen” is also a bit more pop (think Squeeze). The song does slow down briefly for what seems like an excessive mid-song break, but it’s little cause for concern.
Thematically at least, the standout track on Ballad of a Bystander could only be “2006,” which is exactly what it sounds like, a nostalgic longing for that era (“I miss them MySpace days // Featured tracks, unlimited plays // Where’s all those LimeWire files?”) which some of us would probably rather not be reminded was now almost two decades (!) ago. “Knees Up,” then, is a solid rocking enough album wrap-up, right down to the confusing female spoken word interlude (“I hope you enjoyed your workout. We certainly did. These are real people with real results… “).
The final result of Ballad of a Bystander is definitely a rock workout that most listeners will enjoy. Again, the album does represent a noticeable – if relatively slight – decline from their previous one, but there’s more than enough here to ensure that the Reytons are still very much in the game (and their countrymen still appear to be on their side, with the album going to No.2 in the U.K.). Despite titling the album Ballad of a Bystander, the Reytons are still on their way to becoming one of the central figures of British rock in the 2020s.
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