The Maccabees: Wall Of Arms

This is the fallacy of retrospective determinism: imagine a time when you enjoyed The Maccabee's music. A time when there may have been a Maccabee's gig on and you just may have attended it. You might even say you "thoroughly enjoyed it".

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, your mind may flit to thoughts of regret, naivety and rumination. This tale, sadly, may be autobiographical.

So with the band's second album now under our microscope, the opportunity to reminisce about the distant past and to ponder the reasoning behind forgotten love is upon us. How did it fare under the lens?

Wall Of Arms is surprisingly coherent and not at all what you'd expect from a band that previously seemed only intent on partying, making catchy-but-shallow music and getting every indie-kid aged 11-18 on the dance-floor for a skinny-jean wearing, flannel-shirt flying rave of colours and repetitive guitar riffs.

Whilst the music is still from the same band, there's a definite air of maturity and an essence of evolvement within their music, ingredients which they only vaguely attempted last time. Young Lions is still a quick-fire, indie-based track which features the same sort of guitar work as the bands previous material but it's more experimental here, playing with echoes and overlaying guitars instead of settling on two minutes of catchy simplicity.

Lead singer Orlando Weeks has obviously been working on his vocals and sounds so much the better for it. On the introductory track Love You Better, he actually sounds like a serious singer with nice rhythmic pacing and well-executed pitch-changes which sound considerably more comfortable against the angular but gentle guitar-work in the background. You wouldn't hear this on Skins (ed: Think the British equivalent of Gossip Girl), put it that way.

So yes, the record is a surprising treat if you were expecting the same thing as before but that's not to say that it's exactly deep. Whilst the band have obviously done a lot of growing up in the two years between records, they still conform to what they have to in order to sell records and keep the older fans happy. This means that tracks such as Dinosaurs and One Hand Holding still contain the needed - worn-out - formula to excite the youth. Whether you denote that as a positive attribute or a negative one is purely down to your respective age, gender and taste in music. Let's just say that it grates in the places you would expect it to grate (Chorus sing-alongs, needless backing vocals etc.).

No Kind Words is a simple-but-dark exercise in serious song-writing from the band and again, they do it rather well. Orlando's voice is genuinely brooding and the instruments etch an aura of atmospheric brilliance. The latter half is a little more Maccabees-esque but their new-found love of mat-rock influenced guitars as a prominent inclusion in their music works well in our eyes.

The inherent problem with The Maccabees music is that no matter how impressive or improved this album sounds, there's still something completely forgettable about the whole experience. They seem so much more of a 'moment' band than a band with longevity. Their music suits the moment that its being played in but after a week, what was once thrilling becomes stale and less intriguing than before. 

William Powers has a really great pace and texture but it doesn't do much more than collate all of the records previous minor strengths and throw it at you with a decent hook. Orlando once again shines with his new-found vocal strength and overall the track stands out as one of the more interesting attempts but again, there's an overbearing feeling that we'll wake up in the morning and forget we even pressed the play button.

Respect should be coming in the form of truck-loads for The Maccabees and we've added an extra point on because we're probably too nice but also because the band have obviously tried to change for the better and on some levels it works. Let's hope album number three pushes these guys even further because underneath that shell of generic conformity is a rather brilliant band waiting to shine.