After two albums of fairly standard (though accomplished and certainly acclaimed) indie fare, Brighton’s Maccabees serve up a relaxed, pastoral album which NME has called ‘the first classic album of 2012’. Now, I’m not one for such hyperbole, but certainly something about the album made me come back for more, and want to like it. Perhaps it’s the melancholy guitar tones, the mostly-indiscernible vocals, or the fact that it’s their third album and I feel bad for not paying much attention to them before. Add the fact that they played a perfectly-paced pre-evening slot at Bestival last year which really whetted my appetite for this album, and ‘Given To The Wild' quickly popped up on my radar.
The first impression I get is that it reminds me a lot of the second Foals album. The quirky disco jerks were replaced by something altogether more sedate, and Maccabees take this template and run with it. The intro merges into ‘Child’, which starts off with a gentle guitar riff and a groove akin to Beth Orton’s ‘Paris Train’, and envelops you with a steady beat evoking lazy seaside days, which compares favourably to how Metronomy opened their ‘English Riviera’ album. I would hope this song becomes a live favourite of the band’s fanbase, there’s just so much to enjoy. The track begins as a skeleton, which sprouts a brass accompaniment and, later, guitar solos and really sets a pace.
However, things don’t continue in this vein with ‘Feel To Follow’. Instead, syncopated beats with piano and synth chords almost reset the pace, before the Bloc Party-like, high, reverberated harmonising guitars. Even at this early stage of the album, I get the sense The Maccabees are reaching for the epic, but never for the anthemic. There are few sections in this track particularly that would invite mass sing-alongs, but some really beautiful guitar and drum work, whose invention puts many of their lazier contemporaries to shame.
Next, we’re in piano arpeggio triplet heaven for ‘Ayla’. The brass makes a return to compliment Orlando Weeks’ voice. Although the arrangement of the song feels a little clichéd at times, especially with the predictable chord patterns in the chorus, the production quality makes it hard to be negative about the track. There’s so much going on, even with the simple harmonies and melodies, that the track does actually shift slightly from epic to anthemic. If only I could tell what Orlando was singing!
Now, granted that this may be due to my own inability to perceive, or for that matter really care that much about, lyrics on such a record as this. However, like the Cocteau Twins or My Bloody Valentine, I find the ambiguity in some of the lyrical passages really appealing; it lets me concentrate more on the delivery of the singing itself, and give it my own meaning. The barer instrumentation of ‘Glimmer’ does let me catch little snippets here and there: “through it all…”, “how could it ever go wrong?”, etc., and the fact that the song sounds like its title, with the ethereal guitars and ghostly brass is hugely effective.
‘Forever I’ve Known’ features very little percussion at its start, and the disjointed guitars call to mind windswept moors, before my mind’s eye is swept upwards to rapidly moving clouds when the drums eventually kick in. The song is more repetitive than others on the album, with slightly fewer ideas. Instead, the ideas layer on top of each other in the mid-section and repeat at the end. Next up is ‘Heave’; again a slow start, with that now-familiar high-reaching reverberated guitar, to be accompanied later by choir-like vocals. Again, this is languid stuff, and close to being unsettling before the drums come back (again) and save us. This is sacred-sounding stuff, but again the song is repetitive, despite the lovely outro, and some discerning listeners may arrive at the conclusion that the ol’ ‘start-quiet-add-drums-get-a-bit-louder-continue’ template is set for the rest of the album.
So thank goodness ‘Pelican’ arrives to save the day. This is more like Maccabees of old, with those Biffy-like stabs at the beginning; the vocals are clear and meant for singing along to. “So we take a lover, so we take a lover” is an awesome line, with a slight switch in drum pattern. It’s definitely an album highlight, a different beast, but doesn’t abandon the features that The Maccabees have carefully built up over the previous seven tracks. And after that, the atmosphere just changes. The brittle, chilly nature of the first half of the album just eases into an upbeat, positive journey through ‘Went Away’. The vocals are clearer, and though the guitarplay is no less intricate, it is more typical of what one might expect from The Maccabees. A slight hint of electronica pervades the introduction to ‘Go’; but the synth motif remains true to ‘Given To The Wild’’s features. Then, suddenly, a guitar line erupts like a whale’s tail breaking the surface of the ocean before slipping back into the depths of the album, it’s positively the most euphoric moment on the album and actually gave me goosebumps. Safe to say, that if you had switched off a little when first starting this album, you would now be paying the fullest of your attention.
After that, we have the album’s darkest moment: ‘Unknow’. Weeks’ vocals, the bass and the groove in general combine to make something that really reminds me of Mew at their bleakest. The momentum really gets going here, too. There’s a slight dip in pace with the penultimate track ‘Slowly One’. It’s a slight track, which doesn’t really do much until a synth portamento solo takes over, and some frenetic guitar stabs join the chord sequences. Then it all ends with ‘Grew Up At Midnight’, which is uptempo, yet relaxed. All elements are used sparingly at first before they all come together at the end with the refrain “We grew up at midnight, we were only kids then”. You wonder if they are commenting on the nature and stature of this new work they have done. Then suddenly, where some bands may drag out a good instrumental section, they pull back and stop…
Now, I can see where some people might lose The Maccabees on this album. Unless you were a particularly big fan of the more tender moments on, say, the second Foals album, there’s not a lot to excite you here. I’m also reminded of criticisms of the first Bloc Party album, which some (not me!) thought outstayed its welcome at 13 tracks. But with repeated listens (this review was done after about 4 or 5), there are little hooks and sections to each song, which really do reward you. ‘Pelican’ is an obvious highlight as I said, but it’s really worth getting acquainted with the more laidback, restrained first half of the record as well. There are ideas aplenty, but they are used sparingly, perhaps in such a manner that some will mistake for style over substance. I only hope they come back to this album, because it really is good. In my view, the only bad things about ‘Given To The Wild’ do come down to repetition. Despite their wealth of ideas, there are some recycled ones in some songs. For those who like their lyrics, too, this is an album where you’ll have to work hard to derive the intended meanings (but this wasn’t a problem for me). And to be fair, in a time where the music press has started to wonder whether artists have run out of things to say, maybe it’s a good thing that people can’t tell what you’re saying quite so easily.
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