The Maccabees

Here’s the thing about London buses: they’re quite good. It’s a view I’ll defend until my last clueless breath. This faith, however, takes a hiding each summer. And, as I stew in the creamy atmosphere of the W3’s upper deck, I am again asking myself: is it worth it?

The bus’s winding, bone-rattling route only compounds the sense that I am in a mobile steamroom conceived in the bowels of Guantanamo Bay. But, occasionally flitting between north London’s red bricks and horse chestnuts, I see Alexandra Palace’s conical transmitter mast slip in and out of view. And maybe, I consider, the juice might be worth the squeeze.

I don’t know how many times I’ve made some iteration of this journey now, but I remember the first: on June 8, 2012. It had been four years since I had seen The Maccabees for the first time. In Cork’s compact but illustrious Cyprus Avenue they captivated a crowd of 200 people whose passions included Topman cardigans and fringes. 

By 2012, they had moved from the shithouse to the penthouse and emerged from indie’s funeral with a bolder, more lucid, sonic vision. That night, they finished their main set with ‘Pelican’, a song that spends four minutes outrunning itself. Tonight it is no different. Long after the cursed sun has set on this incinerated town, Orlando Weeks’ jittery, almost keening, delivery battles the White brothers’ scuttling, stabby guitar lines in a triumphant close.

It hasn’t been straightforward. At this venue in 2017, in what was promoted as their final show, I held my now-wife as the band finished their set, and Maccabees career, again with ‘Pelican’. “So soon we’re too old to carry,” Weeks chanted, and we cried as much for our younger, winklepickered and ballet-pumped selves as we did for them.

Then, last year, they were back, finishing a Glastonbury set with ‘Pelican’, finishing an All Points East set with ‘Pelican’. “To have it all and still want more,” suddenly meant something new.

Maybe this doesn’t ring the same emotional bell for the ageing millennials sipping Cruzcampo and spritzes in front, behind and to the sides of me, but if ‘Pelican’ in 2012 represented a graduation for the Maccabees and their fans alike, tonight’s ‘Pelican’ has been a crystallisation of all that was achieved or lost in between.

Supporting in Ally Pally’s front garden are Westside Cowboy, who may well be the Maccabees of their time. Part Pavement, part chamber pop, and coming from Manchester, they pull at the loose threads of Americana without teetering on pastiche. Reuben Haycocks, chugging at a Gibson SG and looking like a fresher Graham Coxon, largely shares vocal duties with Aoife Anson O’Connell on songs that defy the tuneless fields of post-punk slop many of their contemporaries tend. 

Anson O’Connell’s gentle yearning across ‘Strange Taxidermy’ is enthralling and, as the four gather round a single microphone like Simon and Garfunkel dressed by Vinted, ‘In The Morning’ offers something lacking in contemporary (broadstroke) British indie: joy.

Speaking of the absence of joy, White Lies follow. 

The nervous, sesh-like energy that hung over the Maccabees reunion show in Victoria Park last year has given way to more of a dinner party vibe. It is, after all, a Thursday evening. Ghosts of Maccabees past and present rub shoulders with fans, there are selfies with Adele, and Lewis Capaldi is on the beers. There’s Stephen Street, co-producer of Colour It In and many notable others, enjoying the weather. There’s Jamie T … somewhere.

“Better,” Weeks begins, demonstrating a firm commitment to the indie-aesthetics bit by layering a blue French chore jacket over a plaid cotton shirt. In this heat, it’s an act of rock ‘n’ roll recklessness GG Allin would jib.

No matter. “I will love you better, I will love you better, I will love you better,” howl 10,000 jaded middle managers back at Weeks, momentarily remembering what made life worth living.

Similarly, Felix White is in a full, albeit linen, suit. And, throughout, burnishes his reputation as indie and cricket’s most wholesome advocate by commanding his audience to go fucking mental. This, coming from another mouth, might induce intestine-wringing bouts of cringe, but there’s something too genuine about White’s broad-eyed enthusiasm to cynic it away. 

The City’s steel and glass flickers in the distance against a rose sky as Sam Doyle imbues ‘Wall of Arms’ with tom-heavy Afropop-ish syncopation and Caroline’s Fred Wordsworth, sitting in on trumpet duties, hovers above all else.

As ‘First Love’ and ‘Precious Time’ arrive, Weeks is back pulling apart the temporal. It’s a constant theme throughout the Maccabees catalogue. ‘We Grew Up at Midnight’, ‘Latchmere’ and ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ all, in some way, deal in childhood and ageing.

‘Toothpaste Kisses’ tonight reveals its gentle poignancy in an otherwise wall-of-sound approach. Though, credit to the man in the Temu Spain kit who chucked a pint as the song’s first bars kicked in. Have the gig you want, not the gig they give you, compadres.

It’s now dark and, in his way, Weeks introduces a new song, their first in ten years, with what sounds like trepidation. All of Weeks’ announcements, however, come with a lick of trepidation. Nervousness is his lyrical stock-in-trade (“let’s take our precious time about it”), which is why the new song — called ‘The Ballad of So Long’ on the setlist — surprises. It teeters on the edge of Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ with Weeks again keening — “loved you so much, loved you so much” — against the Whites’ swells of red-hot industrial reverb. It’s a promising, more muscular evolution.

After a raucous and menacing ‘No Kind Words’, the Maccabees return to the end. ‘Pelican’ enters like an erratic old friend, picking up from wherever they left off in a perennial, half-formed dialogue that shows no interest in closure.

“In the end, in the end
In the end, nothing comes easy.”

Most here know this better now than they did in 2012. Sitting on a volcanic night bus home, I do too.