Mournful farewell gig turns into something like happiness
Pop The Maccabees Alexandra Palace
‘We’re not averse to booing, so if you want to boo get it all out now.” The Maccabees’ frontman Orlando Weeks grinned at the crowd, who cheered and booed in equal measure. The cheers were ecstatic, the boos mournful, for a band this crowd will never cheer again. “We want to make this the most euphoric goodbye ever,” said guitarist Felix White, as he launched into the punchy staccato hook of Love You Better.
There’s always been sentimentality in The Maccabees’ style of indie, which blends anthemic vocals, ricocheting guitars and a fragility reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac. Even the band members’ names – Orlando, Hugo, Felix, Rupert, Sam – have a heroic mythos to them. Their first album, Colour It In (2007), aligned them with Maxïmo Park, The Rakes and The Futureheads as indie-disco staples. But over the course of four records, they were elevated beyond their peers by a maturing sound that led to textured compositions and broadened their range – close your eyes, and the stirring crescendo of Something Like Happiness could be the indie folk of Fleet Foxes.
The south-london quintet are 13 this year, but Weeks’s lyrics are as full of anxiety for the passing of time as ever. On Thursday night, in the first of three last ever Maccabees’ gigs, songs such as Precious Time took on a new significance, Weeks’s quivering vocals taking flight in the vast, sepulchral surrounds of Alexandra Palace.
This was no sombre funeral, though. The Maccabees’ clean break with their fans lent the gig a poignancy and fever like no other, and onstage the band were visibly affected, pausing between songs to hug each other. By the time we arrived at the soaring brass of set-closer Something Like Happiness, Weeks – wearing the same blue French workers’ jacket he’s always worn – wiped a tear from his cheek.
The split, announced in August 2016, came as a shock. The band’s insistence that there had not been “fallings out” did not explain the abrupt extinguishing of a star that had not yet waned. Last year, they headlined their first festival (Latitude), and it’s hard to think of another post-2000s British band – except Arctic Monkeys – that is anywhere close to doing the same.
A glance at the crowd confirmed that this is an outfit that still has a huge amount of momentum – for a band peddling a genre of music that has been declared dead several times over, they remain remarkably able to attract new admirers. Here, there were hundreds of men in their early twenties (and admittedly a few much older than that) wearing skinny jeans, a fashion that was supposedly abandoned years ago. And of course there was still a barrage of twentysomething girls, singing along to the lazy seduction of Toothpaste Kisses, gazing up from the barriers.
“I want people on shoulders,” shouted Weeks, during the four-song encore. “Now.”
Ticker tape flew from the ceiling as the frenetic guitar riffs of Pelican filled the air. “And we go back to where we came from,” sang Weeks. “Again and again and again and again.”
‘This was no sombre funeral – this clean break with their fans lent the gig a poignancy and fever like no other’