May The Force Be With You - The Maccabees

"Darth Vader on the drums, someone as Princess Leia coming on to the Star Wars theme tune". That's the elaborate stunt Orlando Weeks fears his label may suggest as promotion for his band The Maccabees new album 'Wall Of Arms', due out on May 4th (be with you). "It'd be the end of our career but at least we'd be remembered." In reality the band could come on stage dressed as Jar Jar Binks and 'Wall Of Arms’ would still go down as one of the finest albums of 2009.

Following their self-declared “rubbish” final shows in support of debut ‘Colour It In’ at last Summers Offset festival, of which Orlando says, “We only really agreed to play it because Gang Of Four were headlining - we should have just bought a ticket. I’m sure we could have afforded it”, The Maccabees went away and started over again. “We thought we had a lot of songs written and that we were going to be able to go away and at least do a big EP but then we realised they were all shit so we decided to begin again. Entering the studio with the album fully written (but for some “jiggery” left to do on ‘William Powers’ and ‘One Hand Holding’).”

The Maccabees began recording with Markus Dravs, a key influence on the album and a man who has previously worked with Arcade Fire and Bjork. “The first record was done so sporadically that we wanted to do this one on a block so we recorded in Liverpool and Reading then moved onto Paris,” Orlando says. “This record was written to be recorded then played live whereas the first one was done the other way around. Markus came in when we had about 90% of the songs written, we met him in London and we just knew he was the right person to do it in every respect. Plus, he’s a German Scouser which is something to mull over.” We move on with a thousand stereotypes jostling for position.

Speaking of influences. Orlando says The Maccabees “listened to a lot of The National and a lot of Arcade Fire when we were writing and recording the album. The National are such a special band, ‘Boxer’ is an amazing album. At one point the song-writing process became sort of destructive and we found going in the studio 6 days a week was proving really non-productive so we spent some time away from each other and the stuff we were listening to changed immensely. All Felix (White, Guitar) listened to was Public Enemy and Rage Against The Machine, real angry music. Hugo (White, Guitar) was into Orange Juice and all the Postcard Record stuff and I was going back to Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective and that’s when the new stuff started to come together because we were all bringing new ideas in and we had to sort of cross-pollinate.”