The Maccabees Are Taking Over

There are two things you don’t want to hear when doing an interview. Number one is “Hello we’re Keane” the other was what Gigwise got when we went to interview The Maccabees. “How long is this going to take?” says their tour manager “About 20 minutes?” comes Gigwises reply “Can you make it 10 instead?” is what we get back. Pressed for time as the band are still to sound check we head backstage to conduct the interview. The dressing room that The Maccabees are sharing with The Dykeenies and The Horrors is sadly taken up by Faris Badwan of the latter band, so we’re forced into a room roughly the size of a cupboard with 4 Maccabees and 2 members of the Horrors who are busy straightening their hair. We’ll be honest, it’s all a bit bizarre but we crack on nonetheless.

The Maccabees are one quarter of yet another music weekly sponsored tour featuring the aforementioned Dykeenies and Horrors and headlined by the spectacularly awful Fratellis. If you believe the gossip then the tour has been riddled with inter band rivalries and ego’s the size of small countries in Africa. However, amidst all the hype surrounding the tour are The Maccabees, a band of five lads from Brighton who make wonky, literate pop music to warm your heart and have been winning over countless fans. Gigwise is squeezed into this small room with the brilliantly named Felix, Orlando and Rupert, quite frankly this hack feels ashamed by his dull name and briefly considers introducing himself as Tarquin but luckily thinks better of it.

The band are friendly and warm if slightly shy and not exactly forthcoming with lengthy answers but we enjoy a brief chat about Liverpool and debate whether Gigwise hates The Horrors (as both Coffin Joe and Joshua Von Grimm are convinced we do). We look at our watches and realise our 10 minutes is almost up and we haven’t even switched the tape recorder on - shit. Under the stressed glare of the tour manager we begin the interview.

Silence, not a peaceful silence but a fraught and tense silence. What could have caused this? An inappropriate question regarding The Maccabees mothers? No, we merely asked them to describe their band to the uninitiated. Lots of “umming” and “ahh-ing” later and we are still no closer to an answer, “How many times have we being asked this question? And we can never give an answer” says Felix “You’ve stumped us,” says Orlando, we had kind of guessed that much. As the band were unable to give an answer it’s up to us to briefly explain how The Maccabees sound- imagine a mixture of super fast, jerky riffs- a healthy dose of classic British sense of the eccentric and top it off with melancholic ‘sunshine and thunder’ vocals and you have something approaching the likes of ‘Latchmere’ and ‘First Love’. There you go boys, it’s easy.

So apart from a collection of names a school bully dreams of what made The Maccabees form their band? “ Just to have a bit of fun I think. We all knew each other and it just seemed like a good thing to do at the weekend. We started out as a folk band,” says Felix. Hugo disagrees: “We weren’t really a folk band we just used to play quiet music, I’d say what we play now is just louder music than what we were doing before”. Influences are hard to pin down when discussing The Maccabees so we asked what they listened to as youngsters- whose poster was on their bedroom wall. “The Clash” is Felix’s valid but perhaps obvious answer then Orlando pipes up with “When I was younger I really liked The Fugees, Tracy Chapman and The Cranberries. I still like The Cranberries”. Next time you are listening to a Maccabees track see if you can spot Wyclef Jeans influence.