Reverend and the Makers to split

Jon McClure, frontman with indie group Reverend and the Makers, has said he will quit music after their next album.

"I don't want anything to do with this industry, it absolutely stinks," he told BBC 6 Music.

McClure said he would "retire and become a pedal taxi driver" after the group's second album, The French Kiss in the Chaos, comes out next year.

Reverend and the Makers reached the UK top five with their debut album The State of Things last year.

Their single Heavyweight Champion of the World reached the top 10, and they have been a popular draw on the festival circuit this summer.

"I feel like a sore thumb in a piranha pool in this industry"
Jon McClure

But McClure, who started out in a band with Arctic Monkeys singer Alex Turner, said he had sacked his management and would retire from music in January.

"I'm gonna go out having told the truth and with my head held high and having stood for something," he told 6 Music's The Music Week.

"I feel like a sore thumb in a piranha pool in this industry. I don't like the way it's all run by rich men in their 50s who went to private school. It's not something I want to be part of."

In a dig at other indie groups, the outspoken singer continued: "You get these bands who have a few hits, say like the Pigeon Detectives, who come out with another album trying to do the same thing again.

"I'm going to make a record that's truly artistic, which is the Reverend and the Makers album, that's artistically interesting, then I'm going to retire and become a pedal taxi driver."

'Too cynical'

McClure is also part of another group, Mongrel, alongside former Arctic Monkeys bassist Andy Nicholson and Babyshambles guitarist Drew McConnell.

But he said he was sick of the cynicism in the music industry.

"It's all done for profit and not for any degree of musical feeling or sentiment.

"And the press distort things to such a degree that you've not got a hope of knowing what the truth is so it's not something that I want to participate in or fuel any more.

"It makes me tired and it makes me feel ill and I don't want anything more to do with it."

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Reverend and the Makers
The Music Week on 6 Music
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