Much has been made of late of some shift. Someone collected the nation together and gave them the power of popular taste - what did they do with it? Honest citizens conspire; boys with guitars run amok through A-rated radio playlists and the Top 40 like school kids when the teacher’s sick and no-one’s booked a supply. Of course this shift has its abundance of cast-offs – the obviously but irresistibly lamentable likes of Scouting For Girls and Plain White T’s clinging to Borrell et al’s already stale ascent like faecal debris.
Clean faced, The Maccabees roll up at the Roundhouse tonight still trying to figure out where their place is in all this. Musically, we know what we’re gonna get, even this high up in the lofty stalls, where we can survey the bustling scene and, watching fights break out below, feel like Roman emperors at crap gladitorials. Crammed up top in a hood, there’s no power in my thumbs, so let this be it. Up, up; keep fighting, ‘cause from here it’s hilarious.
The band wastes little time, pouring readily into a new track that I don’t know the name of, but just sees the band leaning further, braced, undeterred in the same direction. The first looming, bass note of ‘X-Ray’ comes next, then a roar, then the rest of the song, sounding thinner than the first track. A good omen, you’d think, in retrospect.
The rest of the set grows into a familiar shape, a couple of b-sides littering the best body of Colour It In; a sorry-voiced Orlando Weeks sharing vocal duties with guitarist Felix White, other members stood moodily stage-left or back behind a kit. The band are tight as; melodies, harmonies break and reform willingly all white flag with sorry and surrendering bounties of street-lit song; rhythms tick and kick and skitter and squirt out in all directions, chasing their own tails through the wormholes they make in the scant air of the Roundhouse.
They’re applauded, literally, to the rafters in the gap before the inevitable encore. On their return, Weeks and White swap spotlights and Felix introduces the next three minutes. “We’re gonna bore you with a new one,” he says, discouragingly, before pointing to his right and Weeks: “and he – he’s gonna play that.” Weeks pulls apart the two handles of some moaning snake. “Orlando Weeks playing an accordion!” White’s disbelief, in the face perhaps of an old-school friend raised on The Clash and drum 'n' bass, doesn’t mirror our own. The Maccabees always seemed, somehow, like the sort of band to appreciate the nostalgia engendered by the mournful, slightly absurd hum of a squeezebox.
They way they’re set, enjoying the stage they’ve taken, it’s probably worth asking the question again. What place can The Maccabees find in all of ‘this’? Among the chancers, slack-mouthers and gormless ones? Did you remember ever wishing that boybands were influenced by XTC and Lonnie Donegan rather than tits and Boyz2Men? No? Well, for now just imagine that in the most dynamic, personable, die-eyed, racing-green-British boyband in the lands. And surely the only one to play a sodding accordion.
The Maccabees fall into ‘First Love’ and the audience lets out a final, heaving roar, swells 'til burst, then skips off in search of the next sweaty collision.
Photo: Helen Boast
The Maccabees' 'Toothpaste Kisses' single is out now.
