It’s not surprising that reviews of The Maccabees’ third album, »Given To The Wild«, have been exceptionally negative, so far. There’s hardly any other genre, in which the concept of change is as frowned upon as in the indie-scene. Having gained ground as a naive happy-go-lucky strumming-band and having created a loyal fan-base, the fans themselves will most probably turn their backs on the band as soon as any kind of transformation becomes audible. Depths has never been important to friends of the trivial three-minutes-song by numbers. But it’s exactly depth which the sextet from Brighton seem to have found on their new album. It has taken the band a full two years to create the record, which is why they were able to try out all kinds of different ideas (of which there were plenty): »We wanted everyone in the band to feel freedom while making this record. So individually we would work on ideas and bring them to the rest of the band«, is how guitarist Felix White explains the history of »Given To The Wild«. What came out, at least seen from their musical development, can easily be classified as the band’s very own »Sergeant Pepper«. Except the poppy single »Pelican«, there’s no chumming up with radio-suitability, and so the band takes a step forward. Guitarist White explains further: »We’d listened to a lot of Stone Roses, Talk Talk, Bowie’s Low, Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love« – and that’s audible: many new instruments, dreamy echos, long songs with stretching breaks, changes of rhythms and individual scores arranged interestingly. One could almost speak of »progressive-indie«. But who in the world would want that? Let’s do Kings Of Lion again, instead.
Black Country, New Road
Forever Howlong
Ninja Tune