They say the child is father to the man: where you’re from will always influence where you are headed and how you start will largely determine how you finish. The latest set of indie contenders to face the Second Album Syndrome, attempt to shake off the cloying hype of their initial releases and see if they can ride pop’s vaulting horse from the short-term to the long-term is The Maccabees. Having rolled effortlessly from the jangling sigh-pop to tremolo-heavy hypnotics of their first effort and attracted a sizeable following along the way, could the Brighton quintet justify the love of the good and the few on their second outing?
Initial signs aren’t the best: swapping the jaunty, cock-eyed optimism of debut ‘Colour It In’ for windscreen sentiment and shamelessly epic exercises in quietly yearning desperation, the band have elected to take the most well-trodden trail out of the indie ghetto. Cue strings, ‘expansive’ sounds and self-consciously darker lyrics, all delivered with a leathery gravitas called forth from the tortured souls of dead-eyed men subjected to the endless carousel of rock’s sex-and-groupie treadmill for just a second too long. But wait! Just when you think The Macs are sure to plunge down the chute marked ‘sophomore slump’, landing in the indie dumper alongside other impotent indiepop facsimiles of the once feted and soon forgotten (hello The Kooks, Enemy, Fratellis etc) before floating off down the Swanee and back to the dole queue, the band escape on the mitigating evidence of their frankly rather brilliant second album.
Album opener and first single ‘Love You Better’ sets the tone: staccato melodies a go-go as frontman Orlando Weeks emotes wildly in a fantastically off-kilter rip-n-run through pop’s back garden. A breathless and sugarsweet rush of giddy ecstasy, it sets the tone early doors and canters off dementedly into the sunset under a hail of cavalry drums and scattergun melody like some spring-heeled Jim who’s just found a winning lottery ticket inside a free éclair. Safe in the knowledge that they have now got your full attention, ‘One Hand Holding’ and second single ‘Can You Give It’ unfurl as perfect showcases for Weeks’ brilliantly tumbledown vocal delivery. Alternating between crooning like a dive-bar Sinatra and howling like his pubes are on fire, it’s a trick that also plays to the strengths of the careworn, familial harmony of ‘Wall Of Arms’ and crotch-quivering delights of the icily dispassionate album highlight ‘No Kind Words’. In a curious move, especially considering contemporary pop pickers’ mayfly attention spans, The Maccabees have elected to tuck all the album’s best tunes at the very end; thus, ‘Kiss And Resolve’ a touching paean to love’s wee rituals, ‘William Powers’ and the blurry bliss of ‘Seventeen Hands’ all rush past in a brilliantly unhinged and fleet-footed romp across the very best lengths of the indie thoroughfare.
Granted, there’s nothing to rival the wrong-handed pop gloriousness of ‘First Love’ or ‘Toothpaste Kisses’, but then that wasn’t the point. ‘Wall Of Arms’ is the assured sound of a band learning, growing, daring to move forward and find their stride instead of squeezing into an ill-fitting pair of jeans and hurrying off to Big Smoke in order to pout their way through a string of T4 appearances. ‘Wall Of Arms’ stands on the courage of its convictions, eschewing all trends and traditions other than those the band have chosen to set for themselves. Recognising that style never goes out of fashion, The Maccabees second album is an undoubted highlight of 09.
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