Music > Interviews
Interview with The Maccabees
28/02/12
While music journalists (not us, bien sur) claw at each other for the best analogy to say that The Maccabees have given birth to an album, their third, that they deem Coldplay-esque (ack, my gag reflex) on account of its stadium-filling worthyness, while they (the journalists) are not at all arsed by them, we here at Outline will look at the real statistics. In this case, statistics are the number of anoraked heads bobbing gleefully watching a rainy, but energetic Maccabees Latitude set; statistics are the numbers of pairs of feet crammed into the UEA dugout at one of their previous shows; statistics is the percentage of people spewing out the door of Soundclash record store to see them, versus the number that actually fit inside. We saw the numbers, we felt the love, and we’re ready to welcome the boys again…
You’ve been through the ranks of our Norwich venues, even down to a tiny instore, but what’s been the biggest headline stage for you guys to date? I remember that record store one by the way though, in Norwich, that was weird!
It wasn’t big…! It was fun though, it was a good record shop actually – what was it called?
Soundclash… Yeah, yeah, it was wicked; there was a lot of vinyl up in there – anyway, erm, we did the mainstages at Reading and Leeds Festival and we’re gonna do our own show at Alexandra Palace in June, which will be by far the biggest Maccabees gig, so that’ll be something.
What’s it like coming back to the good old UEA then? Do you find it claustrophobic coming back to these smaller venues? Ha, no, not at all! We’re only playing a few of those bigger gigs, so it’s what we do – we still play venues that size and it’s what we know how to do best really. And the UEA, we’ve done our own show there twice, or three times maybe, but I remember going there supporting the Fratellis on the NME Tour in what seems like about 20 years ago, but what was actually about four or five, and I loved the dugout bit in the middle and it was just a really cool thing to do, so I can’t wait. And in the university obviously, there’s a good astro turf the other side of the venue and we played football with Bombay Bicycle Club on the ice last time we were there, which was potentially very dangerous.
There’s a huge tradition of bands playing football on the NME Tour at the UEA. Is there really? I didn’t know that!
Yeah, because we interview a lot of the bands that come through, I always ask them about the football, and the only ones who wouldn’t play were Glasvegas, ‘cause they said they’d break the other bands’ legs! Oh yeah, ‘cause wasn’t the lead singer of Glasvegas a professional footballer? I think he was; I haven’t looked it up, but I think he was a low league professional footballer.
Yeah, probably for the best then – I don’t think it would have worked out well for Friendly Fires on tour with them… Noooo, and thank god we weren’t on tour with them either.
You’ve got a tremendous memory of your times at the UEA and in Norwich, but I was reading your blog and saw a scrapbook in Milan – is that yours? Yeah, that’s mine; I’ve actually got it with me now – I’m still pritt sticking in the photos! Coincidentally, I got an iPhone last year and one of my new year’s resolutions was to stop looking at my fucking iPhone because you’d go to rehearsals and everyone would just have their heads down, looking at their phones, spending life just looking at the palm of their hand! I was really sick of it, and then as fate goes, I lost my phone in a cab about a month later, so I decided fuck it, I’m just gonna get a diary and write in it everything that I’ve got to do in there, and buy a Polaroid camera on tour and just put the photos in there, which seemed like a nicer thing to have, so that’s what those things are, just my diary.
And obviously some of your memories over the years of touring will dissolve, so it’s a really good way of keeping them tangible… Yeah, it’s a really good way, especially ‘cause I’m the clumsiest, most forgetful person in the world, so it’s a very positive thing for me to have.
The music industry this morning is waking up with a collective ‘meh’ after a very predictable Brits awards ceremony, but it made me think of the similarities between Blur’s journey and yours – we grew up with them and they gradually revealed their musical depth beyond the teenage anthems we fell in love with them for. With a career like yours, can you see yourselves following a similar path? Erm, well I’ve got to be careful what I say, ‘cause they’re really incredible, amazing talented people and like you say, I remember growing up with them and as a fan of theirs, it was amazing to see them revealing that depth and insecurity and all those different things in their music as it went on, which was a really beautiful thing as a fan, and I’d never say we’ll be that band ‘cause those bands only ever happen like once every 20 years, or whatever. I do feel like we could be one of those bands that like in the way the music industry used to work, can develop with every record, and we still feel we have a lot of offer, that we haven’t exhausted anything, and that’s a really positive feeling; I don’t know if many bands get to their third record and feel like they’ve got a lot left, do you know what I mean?
People talk about your maturity between ‘Colour It In’ and ‘Given to the Wild’, but you have just grown up and you can’t write the same record again, but do you ever want to reclaim the gay abandon that ‘Colour It In’ had?! Well at the gigs, we’re still playing ‘X-Ray’ and ‘First Love’ and a few things from it, which those songs seem to age really well with people, so every night we kind of still are, and there’s still a side of us that is that band and the live show is slowly transitional, but we kind of play those same songs still at the same speed, and with the same kind of feel, if not more. It doesn’t feel like we’ve lost that part of us, we’ve just got more things to us now as well.
I read an interview from last month where Orlando said, “Success will buy us creative freedom” – I think from a fan’s point of view, we’d say you had both, but do you feel you still have some way to go on that? Erm, well I think the point that was being made there was that when we first started, no matter how much bands say it’s all about the music, if you haven’t got the financial means, or you aren’t far enough up the ladder, there are certain things you have to play along with to put out the next record, or whatever, and we had to do that to a certain extent. We had to do that a little bit with the first one and I think one of the appealing things for us being a bit bigger and more successful is that we can really place where The Maccabees is, and really have 100% ownership over what our band is and where we pop up, you know, visually, and what it’s associated with and that’s something that all the big bands have had, you know. That’s really appealing and I think it’s one of the beautiful things that being in a successful group can give you.
You’ve probably strengthened your armoury now by splitting songwriting duties on this album too – in our interviews past, you’ve said there were a lot of arguments writing the songs, so was this album marital bliss? No, definitely not! It was never just one person who used to write; we all had a go at them and used to fight things out, but the concept with this one was that everyone was grown up and had more personal ideas about how to make music, and knew mechanically how to do it, so why not let us by ourselves individually, and then… you know, to keep something going, you can’t always split it five ways because it feels compromising and constricting for everyone, do you know what I mean? It’s that thing that if someone’s really passionate about something and you let them run with it, and make it as good as it can be, then it works the same with someone else; you get different dimensions and angles within the music, and your little personalities have a chance to pop out a bit more hopefully.
For you Felix, when we were talking last time, you never ever thought that you’d be able to shoehorn your love of hip hop into The Maccabees’ music, but you managed to get Roots Manuva in for your re-release of ‘No Kind Words’… Did I say that? I probably did say that!
Yeah, you said, “No, that’d be a disaster”, but it worked so fantastically! Oh thanks, yeah! That was strange, having said that, I did kinda chase him up to do that because I just thought it’d be fun and just one of those random things that had happened. He just phoned me one day when I was at my Dad’s house –
- How does he introduce himself? As Roots, or Rodney? Rodney, yeah, and it was a surreal ten minutes because my Dad was trying to wash my trousers and he was shouting at me to bring my trousers down or whatever, and I was going, ‘Dad, it’s Roots Manuva on the fucking phone, get out of here!’ Haha, but he was great and he did it really happily. He’s just one of the great, long-standing musicians of our generation in the UK. It’s something to be cherished; he’s so innovative and I just wanted to have him on a record.
He is brilliant, and he really understands and pushes forward British music, which is really exciting because I still think, as a small island, we produce the best stuff by square mile, and he’s one of the people pushing it forward… Yeah, absolutely, absolutely – Roots Manuva is just an incredible example of eccentricity and creativity, and his music characterises a lot of that, it’s just fantastic.
Now you’re a long way through the calendar year past festivals that were, and you’re confirming new ones almost daily for this summer, so you must have got far enough beyond it to have forgotten what a slog it is, and look forward to this summer… Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it, because the few dates we’ve just done, the snow followed us around everywhere, so I’m kind of excited to be in Australia and things like that ‘cause it’s cool isn’t it, going round the world, playing guitar an’ that! Entertaining people is doing something worthwhile.
With the new album, the instrumentation goes on so much more of an adventure than on previous records, so what’s the implication for you and your guitar? Well we’re still lining up pretty conventionally, and my brother Will is now in the band full time really; he’s doing samples and padding and things like that, and a lot of the sounds on the record are little samples and stuff, which he’s kind of taken care of, and also there are sounds which are disguised guitars, as it were. So we’re still playing a lot of guitars and stuff, trying to mould it into the new set, which seems impossible, but it works I think – it’s just a little more direct.
I can grill you now, even though you’ve just released the new album, about whether you’ve even thought about new material… Well we’ve vaguely talked about things, but I think everyone’s brains are a bit exhausted. Because of the way we wrote, the last one was a little bit easier, so I think it’s gonna be easier to write and record on tour, rather than wait to get into a rehearsal room to bash it out, or whatever. I always want things to happen at like a million miles an hour and I was telling the boys a couple of months ago that we should make a double album next time, and they were like, ‘shut up man! We’ve just made this one, leave it out!’ I’ve realised that if I keep insisting, it’s gonna happen slower, so we’ll just let it happen. But by the end of this year, I think, there should be six or seven songs written I hope.
Yeah, and maybe if you have a double album, you can finally make that foray into hip hop! Yeah, but I want to reiterate, maybe a little less strongly than last time, because it did happen a little bit, the Maccabees don’t belong too much in hip hop!
You always bring us an awesome show when you come to Norwich, so what as an audience can we do for you? Well we’ve played Norwich so many times and there’s nothing you really need to do because you always bring a real spirit to the gigs, which is amazing. I kinda feel like it’s been the same people who’ve come to see us again and again, and stuck with us; the faces slowly grow and change, but there’s a good sense of community. I love playing the UEA.
I think you’re right, we’ve grown up over the last, say, six years with you guys, and Norwich is a city that never forgets! “Norwich is a city that never forgets” – I like that quote!
Emma Garwood
The Maccabees come to the UEA on March 14th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk.
While music journalists (not us, bien sur) claw at each other for the best analogy to say that The Maccabees have given birth to an album, their third, that they deem Coldplay-esque (ack, my gag reflex) on account of its stadium-filling worthyness, while they (the journalists) are not at all arsed by them, we here at Outline will look at the real statistics. In this case, statistics are the number of anoraked heads bobbing gleefully watching a rainy, but energetic Maccabees Latitude set; statistics are the numbers of pairs of feet crammed into the UEA dugout at one of their previous shows; statistics is the percentage of people spewing out the door of Soundclash record store to see them, versus the number that actually fit inside. We saw the numbers, we felt the love, and we’re ready to welcome the boys again…
You’ve been through the ranks of our Norwich venues, even down to a tiny instore, but what’s been the biggest headline stage for you guys to date? I remember that record store one by the way though, in Norwich, that was weird!
It wasn’t big…! It was fun though, it was a good record shop actually – what was it called?
Soundclash… Yeah, yeah, it was wicked; there was a lot of vinyl up in there – anyway, erm, we did the mainstages at Reading and Leeds Festival and we’re gonna do our own show at Alexandra Palace in June, which will be by far the biggest Maccabees gig, so that’ll be something.
What’s it like coming back to the good old UEA then? Do you find it claustrophobic coming back to these smaller venues? Ha, no, not at all! We’re only playing a few of those bigger gigs, so it’s what we do – we still play venues that size and it’s what we know how to do best really. And the UEA, we’ve done our own show there twice, or three times maybe, but I remember going there supporting the Fratellis on the NME Tour in what seems like about 20 years ago, but what was actually about four or five, and I loved the dugout bit in the middle and it was just a really cool thing to do, so I can’t wait. And in the university obviously, there’s a good astro turf the other side of the venue and we played football with Bombay Bicycle Club on the ice last time we were there, which was potentially very dangerous.
There’s a huge tradition of bands playing football on the NME Tour at the UEA. Is there really? I didn’t know that!
Yeah, because we interview a lot of the bands that come through, I always ask them about the football, and the only ones who wouldn’t play were Glasvegas, ‘cause they said they’d break the other bands’ legs! Oh yeah, ‘cause wasn’t the lead singer of Glasvegas a professional footballer? I think he was; I haven’t looked it up, but I think he was a low league professional footballer.
Yeah, probably for the best then – I don’t think it would have worked out well for Friendly Fires on tour with them… Noooo, and thank god we weren’t on tour with them either.
You’ve got a tremendous memory of your times at the UEA and in Norwich, but I was reading your blog and saw a scrapbook in Milan – is that yours? Yeah, that’s mine; I’ve actually got it with me now – I’m still pritt sticking in the photos! Coincidentally, I got an iPhone last year and one of my new year’s resolutions was to stop looking at my fucking iPhone because you’d go to rehearsals and everyone would just have their heads down, looking at their phones, spending life just looking at the palm of their hand! I was really sick of it, and then as fate goes, I lost my phone in a cab about a month later, so I decided fuck it, I’m just gonna get a diary and write in it everything that I’ve got to do in there, and buy a Polaroid camera on tour and just put the photos in there, which seemed like a nicer thing to have, so that’s what those things are, just my diary.
And obviously some of your memories over the years of touring will dissolve, so it’s a really good way of keeping them tangible… Yeah, it’s a really good way, especially ‘cause I’m the clumsiest, most forgetful person in the world, so it’s a very positive thing for me to have.
The music industry this morning is waking up with a collective ‘meh’ after a very predictable Brits awards ceremony, but it made me think of the similarities between Blur’s journey and yours – we grew up with them and they gradually revealed their musical depth beyond the teenage anthems we fell in love with them for. With a career like yours, can you see yourselves following a similar path? Erm, well I’ve got to be careful what I say, ‘cause they’re really incredible, amazing talented people and like you say, I remember growing up with them and as a fan of theirs, it was amazing to see them revealing that depth and insecurity and all those different things in their music as it went on, which was a really beautiful thing as a fan, and I’d never say we’ll be that band ‘cause those bands only ever happen like once every 20 years, or whatever. I do feel like we could be one of those bands that like in the way the music industry used to work, can develop with every record, and we still feel we have a lot of offer, that we haven’t exhausted anything, and that’s a really positive feeling; I don’t know if many bands get to their third record and feel like they’ve got a lot left, do you know what I mean?
People talk about your maturity between ‘Colour It In’ and ‘Given to the Wild’, but you have just grown up and you can’t write the same record again, but do you ever want to reclaim the gay abandon that ‘Colour It In’ had?! Well at the gigs, we’re still playing ‘X-Ray’ and ‘First Love’ and a few things from it, which those songs seem to age really well with people, so every night we kind of still are, and there’s still a side of us that is that band and the live show is slowly transitional, but we kind of play those same songs still at the same speed, and with the same kind of feel, if not more. It doesn’t feel like we’ve lost that part of us, we’ve just got more things to us now as well.
I read an interview from last month where Orlando said, “Success will buy us creative freedom” – I think from a fan’s point of view, we’d say you had both, but do you feel you still have some way to go on that? Erm, well I think the point that was being made there was that when we first started, no matter how much bands say it’s all about the music, if you haven’t got the financial means, or you aren’t far enough up the ladder, there are certain things you have to play along with to put out the next record, or whatever, and we had to do that to a certain extent. We had to do that a little bit with the first one and I think one of the appealing things for us being a bit bigger and more successful is that we can really place where The Maccabees is, and really have 100% ownership over what our band is and where we pop up, you know, visually, and what it’s associated with and that’s something that all the big bands have had, you know. That’s really appealing and I think it’s one of the beautiful things that being in a successful group can give you.
You’ve probably strengthened your armoury now by splitting songwriting duties on this album too – in our interviews past, you’ve said there were a lot of arguments writing the songs, so was this album marital bliss? No, definitely not! It was never just one person who used to write; we all had a go at them and used to fight things out, but the concept with this one was that everyone was grown up and had more personal ideas about how to make music, and knew mechanically how to do it, so why not let us by ourselves individually, and then… you know, to keep something going, you can’t always split it five ways because it feels compromising and constricting for everyone, do you know what I mean? It’s that thing that if someone’s really passionate about something and you let them run with it, and make it as good as it can be, then it works the same with someone else; you get different dimensions and angles within the music, and your little personalities have a chance to pop out a bit more hopefully.
For you Felix, when we were talking last time, you never ever thought that you’d be able to shoehorn your love of hip hop into The Maccabees’ music, but you managed to get Roots Manuva in for your re-release of ‘No Kind Words’… Did I say that? I probably did say that!
Yeah, you said, “No, that’d be a disaster”, but it worked so fantastically! Oh thanks, yeah! That was strange, having said that, I did kinda chase him up to do that because I just thought it’d be fun and just one of those random things that had happened. He just phoned me one day when I was at my Dad’s house –
- How does he introduce himself? As Roots, or Rodney? Rodney, yeah, and it was a surreal ten minutes because my Dad was trying to wash my trousers and he was shouting at me to bring my trousers down or whatever, and I was going, ‘Dad, it’s Roots Manuva on the fucking phone, get out of here!’ Haha, but he was great and he did it really happily. He’s just one of the great, long-standing musicians of our generation in the UK. It’s something to be cherished; he’s so innovative and I just wanted to have him on a record.
He is brilliant, and he really understands and pushes forward British music, which is really exciting because I still think, as a small island, we produce the best stuff by square mile, and he’s one of the people pushing it forward… Yeah, absolutely, absolutely – Roots Manuva is just an incredible example of eccentricity and creativity, and his music characterises a lot of that, it’s just fantastic.
Now you’re a long way through the calendar year past festivals that were, and you’re confirming new ones almost daily for this summer, so you must have got far enough beyond it to have forgotten what a slog it is, and look forward to this summer… Yeah, I’m really looking forward to it, because the few dates we’ve just done, the snow followed us around everywhere, so I’m kind of excited to be in Australia and things like that ‘cause it’s cool isn’t it, going round the world, playing guitar an’ that! Entertaining people is doing something worthwhile.
With the new album, the instrumentation goes on so much more of an adventure than on previous records, so what’s the implication for you and your guitar? Well we’re still lining up pretty conventionally, and my brother Will is now in the band full time really; he’s doing samples and padding and things like that, and a lot of the sounds on the record are little samples and stuff, which he’s kind of taken care of, and also there are sounds which are disguised guitars, as it were. So we’re still playing a lot of guitars and stuff, trying to mould it into the new set, which seems impossible, but it works I think – it’s just a little more direct.
I can grill you now, even though you’ve just released the new album, about whether you’ve even thought about new material… Well we’ve vaguely talked about things, but I think everyone’s brains are a bit exhausted. Because of the way we wrote, the last one was a little bit easier, so I think it’s gonna be easier to write and record on tour, rather than wait to get into a rehearsal room to bash it out, or whatever. I always want things to happen at like a million miles an hour and I was telling the boys a couple of months ago that we should make a double album next time, and they were like, ‘shut up man! We’ve just made this one, leave it out!’ I’ve realised that if I keep insisting, it’s gonna happen slower, so we’ll just let it happen. But by the end of this year, I think, there should be six or seven songs written I hope.
Yeah, and maybe if you have a double album, you can finally make that foray into hip hop! Yeah, but I want to reiterate, maybe a little less strongly than last time, because it did happen a little bit, the Maccabees don’t belong too much in hip hop!
You always bring us an awesome show when you come to Norwich, so what as an audience can we do for you? Well we’ve played Norwich so many times and there’s nothing you really need to do because you always bring a real spirit to the gigs, which is amazing. I kinda feel like it’s been the same people who’ve come to see us again and again, and stuck with us; the faces slowly grow and change, but there’s a good sense of community. I love playing the UEA.
I think you’re right, we’ve grown up over the last, say, six years with you guys, and Norwich is a city that never forgets! “Norwich is a city that never forgets” – I like that quote!
Emma Garwood
The Maccabees come to the UEA on March 14th. For tickets, go to www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk. Read the uncut version of this interview at Outlineonline.co.uk