It’s been coming for a while, you feel. Ever since The Maccabees released debut single ‘X-Ray’ into the dark days of November 2005, they’ve been marked by many as a band to watch; understandable, given the quality of their entrance music. Now near enough 18 months have passed, the debut album’s done, and their songs are more likely to find themselves filling the Astoria than throatboy Orlando Weeks’ Clapham bedroom.
The venue upgrade’s deserved, though – every song on Colour It In sounds like a single aside, perhaps, from the none-more-tender ditties that bookend the album, (‘Good Old Bill’, ‘Toothpaste Kisses’). This is why lots of you will have heard half the record already, through 7”s, double As and radio play, and many more will be familiar with a sound that spins and kicks similar to others that have bruk recent into the top 40.
High on treble, taut and revelling in its own tension, The Maccabees’ is a sound that takes its cue from exponents of post-punk more modern than those resting in the pages of Rip It Up And Start Again. Surely I don’t have to name names? It feels like grassing. ‘Latchmere’, ‘All In Your Rows’, ‘Precious Time’, ‘Happy Faces’, ‘Lego’. There are some names worth remembering, a task only made easier ‘cause they all speak with the same mother tongue.
Wipe the sweat from your top lip. This particular gang o’ four (erm, five? – Ed) work to craft builds and drops that should sound as hackneyed as the phrase ‘dizzying highs and terrifying lows’ but somehow just sweep you clean off your feet. The music is agile, fluid, rather than stuck in rock staccato; flying from verse to chorus without a pause to draw breath or drag from taxed cigarette.
Drum and bass interlock to the extent that it sounds like it’s the low frequencies keeping the hi-hats rattling, while brothers Hugo and Felix White apparently have an understanding that allows them to pull together really fucking tight; dual guitars stabbing like pins and needles through the sore sides of your rib cage.
It’s this mob-driven momentum, as well as the humanity dripping from the tonsils of their singer, that sets The Maccabees apart and above their peers. With a lyrical worldview falling somewhere between Ferris Bueller... and Gregory’s Girl, Weeks sounds like a schoolboy who's been dismantled by love and who’s now in the process of putting himself back together again.
So yes, he does sometimes sound like a bit of a pussy, but then so do you, and you, and you, sometimes. What’s important is that you know his woe is real and that he dealt with it by joining a band and writing a great British pop album rather than blowing all his money on drugs and shoes.
Why...
...does Kev always give shit bands positive reviews?
Not a shit band
So your logic is flawed
wrong
you absolute douche.
Not a shit band,
just a bunch of guys playing dull music for dull people.
Band = not shit.
Album = not shit.
yep
go dom
Toothpaste Kisses
is low-key class.
The only song Ive heard
is the one that was out recently with the crap video that replaced the original crap video with the whiny crap lyric "you stood out like a sore thumb". The Maccabees are crap.
shit live and all
shows
you clearly haven't seen them live recently, if at all, or just have no perception of what constitutes a good live act.
your wrong.
the maccabees for me are one of the best bands around at the moment. They are amazing live, the album is a masterpiece and i can honestly say the nicest bunch of blokes.
I actually quite like their videos aswell. Beats the dull, usual performance crap.
the re-do of latchmere
IS IMMENSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this is such a good album.
have yopu actaully listened to this record?
it's really awful
it really is another band INSPIRED by Pete and Carl's adventures in the recording studio
I am sorry but this music aspires to being dull and boring
It must do.
Where is the spark? Or the sadness? Or the TUNES? Or the joy?
I am right and anyone who disagrees is wrong.
2/10
that is the correct score
3/10 if you happen to like his voice
two things:
1) theres nothing wrong with being inspired by the Libertines if you aren't just rehashing what they did, so be gone with your indie-snobbery. But...
2) this sounds fuck all like The Libertines. Its naive innocent brilliant summery pop, miles away from The Libertines. Level that accusation at shit like Little Man Tate and The Frattellis if you will, leave The Maccabees alone.
I love this album.
Happy Face.
LMT and The Frats
don't sound like the libertines either.
It always amazes me...
... when peeps say Band X are "amazing live", "a really top band" etc and then add "oooh, and they're really nice guys too." As if that matters. "Oh, oh! I'm friends with a band, look at me, look at me!"
and it amazes me
that half the nation can't tell the difference between 'your' and 'you're'. I blame a steady diet of lacklustre indie pop rotting the nation's collective grey matter
I find them very dull
I understand if people don't like em but
but to describe them as boring is totaly wrong. This LP is quite lively and a million miles from the Libs sound. A brilliant album well thought out and executed. good review and I also give it 8/10.
Nah
It's dull as pig shit.
New Ranter
I've never posted a message on DIS yet have been a reader for some time - not wanting to be condescending to the younger readers/listeners but i really find it hard to like ANYTHING from UK bands these days. I won't harp on about the kids all wanting to be attached to scenes a la Pete Doherty and Dirty Pretty Things etc (although the ubiquitous skinny jeans and mullet hair dos do make them tempting targets..)and clearly I don' t mean every UK band without exception - i just find that very few bands keep me engrossed in the way that bands gone-by did. There are certain as yet un-celebrated bands on the scene that simply cannot make it due to the way everything has to be pigeonholed (Eg. The Boxer Rebellion) and fit nicely into a corporate sponsored fesitival.
Unfortunately i tend to find that the most interesting music comes out of the states or Europe. Look at bands like Sigur Ros or the Mars Volta - they truly push back the boundaries of music without having to tip their hats to fashionistas and youth movements and at the same time are actually listenable with hooks and melodies.
I'm afraid I have never heard the Maccabees and i sadly i probably wont unless someone shoves it in my face but surely this is an indictment not on the band but the UK music scene in general. And yes i know some-one will say it's an indictment on me but that's the sad truth of it for many people i know over the age of 25/30.
woot!
Hurrah!
Give me foreign music any day.
I will listen to all this indie shit because it is not exactly what one would call taxing upon the mind and is generally what everyone is into at this particular moment in time, but give me A Silver Mt. Zion, M83 and a bit of Godspeed! (throw in some Radiohead as they are possibly one of the more original British bands of this particular moment in time and they never cease to amaze) any day and I am marvellously happy - the skill involved in making such beautiful music that actually makes you marvel at the art of playing an instrument (it would seem to me that anyone can pick up a guitar these days and play it with minimal help from the internet) goes above and beyond what the indie scene does.
Whilst indie music may make people dance around like lunatics and sing raucously (which I am not opposed to) it is all ridiculously over rated and I think that the bands that inspired them actually have a hell of a lot more to them than the superficial wasters who are making music today.
(and I am well off being 25 - some of us young folk are just stuck in a past they never had)
And everyone should own a gramophone.
Not just because they are beautiful looking contraptions but because the music that I have discovered by purchasing a box of old 78s is absolutely marvellous and mystifying and it just has a certain... quality to it.
I just don't get
why everyone is having a go at the state of British music at the moment. This year alone we've had great albums from the likes of Field Music, Patrick Wolf, Electrelane, The Twilight Sad, Pop Levi, Gruff Rhys, Polytechnic, Fields, Arctic Monkeys, Butcher Boy, Bloc Party to name just a few. I do not doubt there is a lot of great stuff elsewhere, but don't disregard the whole of the British Isles just because you don't like whats currently in the Top 40 / front cover of NME.
Alsa, listened to this album a couple of times - slightly dissapointed as they were great live last year when I saw them. May be a grower though...
lol,
so, fans of experimental prog- and post-rock are flossing about not liking the maccabees?
isn't that kinda obvious?
i'm actually a big fan of
Silver Mt Zion, Godspeed, Explosions, etc. but The Maccabees gigs I've been to this year have been my favourites (that includes Explosions at Astoria and Koko and Silver Mt Zion at Scala). Not least because they're fucking good fun.
I don't know why people are so keen to shoot down new British pop music these days but for fuck's sake, give them a chance. If you don't like their records then have a look at their acoustic stuff (I'm sure it'll be on youtube or whatever). Orlando Weeks is certainly one of the most promising young British songwriters around and his acoustic stuff reflects this.
They also come across really well in interviews, aware of their precarious position of trying to make a living from their music whilst not being seen as 'mainstream'.
Seriously, give this album a chance. A real, honest chance, and you might just find it to be one of the best British releases this year. It definitely is for me.
indeed..
Perhaps I have painted myself in a harsh light, but I don't really listen to much new stuff - I am listening to Simon & Garfunkel right now for instance (oh the beautiful harmonies!). I do go to many gigs and have been extremely disappointed and surprised by what I have seen this year - I enjoyed Patrick Wolf immensely and understand why he has a legion of fans - he plays the Theremin for fucks sake; but Air Traffic who I thought could be a bit different turned out to be a generic clone of some other band; Ripchord sounded v. similar to Arctic Monkey's and Mumm-ra were a bunch of women who let a technical glitch get in the way of kicking off a gig - what happened to the rock n roll attitude of not caring?
I am not completely writing off British music - there is some great stuff out there if you are able to sift through the utter crap that is around in multitudes; which takes a heck of a lot of time, but at this particular moment in time I am enjoying what I am hearing from futher afield.
I will get back to living in the present soon.
What can I say...
...but you're damn right there. I've been listening to the Maccabees and other bands like the Wombats, the Rifles and the Cribs, because you can't avoid them nowadays. And...it's more or less all the same to me: indie (what an overused term anyway). I'm not saying that these bands sound exactely the same, but they sound in my opinon very similar. Oh, and they look quite similar too, what an coincidence. All I can say is this: british indie music has become something terribly boring and calculable: nice boys in apparently trendy and fashionable clothes playing mainly guitar based music, that's harmless and poppy and which even your mum and granny can dance and sing along to when they're doing the ironing. There's no rock anymore in indie either...
All these things can be referred to the Maccabees too. And the guy, Oralndo, has seen too much footage of Ian Curtis. They're not bad - they're just so...average.
Rants
Why say you won't harp on about the kids..when you do?
From a 25 year old fan of the Maccabees (oh yes someone over 25 likes them)
Rants are pants
i just finished
'rip it up & start again' so the reference made me do a little chuckle inside. be nice to kev, it's hard to be positive about anything these days, well done.
who cares about music
lets all argue about something else like i don't like the idea of my credit card info being sold to big companies for my precious spending info, what's up with that.
Calm down
It's only a leisure pursuit. Even if you don't like The Maccabees, there are far more offensive bands out there for you to sink your collective maw into.
And swearwords are just that, swearwords. They don't make an argument any more eloquent than an adjective, it just makes you look like a child lashing out, guys.
I love how...
one review has turned into a large debate over the state of british music, which I think when you look past the obvious shite is looking pretty good.
As for the maccabees, I really like this album its just lots of good non pretensious tunes. I'd rather take the quirkly english and naive sound over another libertines/arctics wannabe who try to comment on worlds they know sod all about.
Arctic Monkeys
seem to know a fair bit, imo. They speak to everyone.
its not that shit?
its not particularly good now though is it?
and the singers voice is annoying.
They know
what they're been around. Turner pens witty lyrics, but there's only so many times you can hum about hookers and chip shops. they write about what they know, which is fuck all outside of sheffield.
you
realise this is a music website yes?
....
This album's quality. Anyone who says otherwise is simply out of touch or being spiteful for the sake of it.
I think there are too many people who use this site to just write negative stuff for the sake of saying something. If you haven't got anything worth saying, do us all a favour and shut up because at the end of the day you're talking complete bollocks and sounding like right wankers in the process of doing so.
don't be a twat
?
why? I have an opinion and I'm allowed to say it!
The Maccabees playing Rotten Love - Levy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGWFK1-DZgg
:)
The Maccabees
are an amazing band, i hate to sound like a pretentious twat, but there is something utterly heartbreaking about their music. I understand this comment means i am to be viewed as someone so young that they must have none to very little musical knowledge, but this is not the case. I completly adore everything about this band and i think before judging the album so hastily, Listen to it properly, perhaps you could learn something from it, maybe even how to love, you sour bunch of fools.
Somene reply
i fancy a bit of a conflict.
Not as good as bits an bobs
Really liked this band before this album. Somehow their Demo's sound a lot better than the polished songs that have had their quirky qualities removed. 6/10