Album Review: The Maccabees, ‘Given To The Wild’

Remember The Maccabees? Some of you may well have forgotten about them, but they’re back with a brand new album, ‘Given To The Wild.’ But then with seemingly thousands of indie rock bands filling the landscape, it naturally takes originality or sheer brilliance on record for a band to stand out from the crowd. And judging by the three LP’s in their discography including this one, The Maccabees don’t have either.

Debut album ‘Colour It In’ was practically a facsimile of the mid-noughties British indie trends, aping The Futureheads, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party to such a degree it was almost laughably derivative, particularly as those bands borrowed heavily from the 1980s post-punk of Orange Juice and Talking Heads in the first place.

Second effort ‘Wall of Arms’ – with its laughter-inducing cover art- was a conscious attempt to mine the epic sweep of Arcade Fire, with the band even hiring the same producer who helmed the Fire’s sophomore effort ‘Neon Bible’. Once again the results were largely forgettable and uninspiring, not even close to reaching the Arcade Fire level they so clearly aspired to.

And so on to third effort ‘Given To The Wild’. And perhaps not surprisingly given their previous form for bandwagon hopping, The Maccabees have picked out another band and trend to lock on to and imitate. And this time, perhaps with record label intervention, it is the turn of Coldplay and widescreen arena rock. After all, this is the most lucrative area of the alternative rock landscape to mine, right?

Beginning with the meandering ambience of ‘Given To The Wild (Intro)’, the record immediately descends into the contrived atmospherics of Coldplay’s X&Y album, the notoriously calculated, EMI saving LP it most closely resembles. Indeed, ‘Child’ and ‘Heave’ are so Coldplayesque you get the feeling Chris Martin might laugh out loud upon hearing them, or alternatively have a word with his lawyers as to what action to take. Vocalist Orlando Weeks appears to be doing his best Martin impression throughout the album, as his band cracks out echo-laden guitar solos that mimic the Edge and Jonny Buckland with alarming regularity.

‘Given To The Wild’ is not completely awful (‘Forever I’ve Known’ and lead single ‘Pelican’ boast relatively catchy riffs and choruses) but it is undeniably mediocre, and sometimes that is a harder pill to swallow. A band or solo artist that takes many risks and sometimes fails gloriously (step forward Lou Reed) will no doubt be remembered longer than one that makes such calculated steps as this. You just wonder what trend The Maccabees will cotton on to for their next album, if there is one.

By William David Wilson

@wdwilso2