Reytons and Pulp unite South Yorkshire generations
WHEN The Reytons step on stage in Madrid in July, they will do so against a backdrop set at Tramlines last summer, where critics pointed to a symbolic passing of the torch in South Yorkshire music.
At Mad Cool Festival, the Rotherham indie band share a bill with Sheffield legends Pulp, placing two generations of the same scene before a global audience.
The Reytons’ appearance marks another milestone in a journey that has taken them from local heroes to the international festival circuit.
Their Madrid set comes alongside Pulp, ensuring audiences witness the past, present and future of South Yorkshire music on the same weekend.
Direct comparisons can be misleading. Yet they have much in common.
Formed in 2017, The Reytons – Jonny Yerrell, Joe O’Brien, Lee Holland and Jamie Todd – built their reputation on gritty, observational indie rock rooted firmly in working-class life.
Their songs blend social commentary with punchy melodies, drawing attention for their sharp sense of place and perspective.
Pulp’s frontman Jarvis Cocker, now 62, founded the band in Sheffield in 1978 and remains its creative anchor.
Their Britpop-era success made them one of the most influential acts of the 1990s, with songs like Common People and Mis-Shapes still praised for their intelligent portraits of everyday life.
The Reytons’ rise has been rapid.
Their 2023 album What’s Rock and Roll? reached number one on the UK Albums Chart, they sold out Rotherham’s Clifton Park to 20,000 people in 2024, and in 2025 they became the first unsigned band to headline Sheffield’s Tramlines Festival.
It was Tramlines that prompted critics to frame a wider narrative.
One review described Pulp’s Friday night headline set in Hillsborough as a celebration of South Yorkshire’s musical legacy, while The Reytons’ Saturday performance felt like a crowning for a new generation shaped by similar streets and stories.
Writing for Soundsphere, critic John Hayhurst said the finale “belonged to The Reytons,” adding that their headline slot “felt like a coronation” as a hometown crowd sang every word back with pride.
He described it as “a statement”.
Members of The Reytons have long been open about their admiration for Pulp.
In a 2023 interview at Neighbourhood Weekender, bassist Lee Holland said they were planning to watch Pulp and called them “absolute legends,” admitting to feeling star-struck at the prospect of meeting them.
Frontman Jonny Yerrell has also acknowledged Pulp as part of the lineage of great Sheffield bands that shaped his musical outlook.
His writing, often described as being born from lived experience, mirrors the narrative approach that made Cocker’s songs resonate so widely.
Both songwriters are frequently praised for lyrics that function like short stories, capturing the mundane realities of Yorkshire life with humour, grit and honesty.
That shared social realism has led critics to place The Reytons in a tradition long associated with Pulp.
Mad Cool Festival, staged in Madrid this July, features a broad international line-up.
The inclusion of The Reytons offers overseas audiences a rare chance to hear two distinct eras of Yorkshire music in the same space.
Yerrell, now 40 and leading a band with deep local roots and growing international reach, and Cocker, whose career spans almost five decades, represent different chapters of the same regional story.