The London five-piece ended 2007 on a wave of praise after their debut was hailed as one of the best alternative pop records of the year.

David Jackson spoke to guitarist Hugo White about the band, their new album and their plans for the future.


Fans were given a taste of new Maccabees material when No Kind Words was given away as a free download earlier this year.

"The feedback from just that song has been amazing," White explains.

"It wasn't really a single, the idea was just to give something away to people. We'd been away for a while and it seemed the best way to get people straight back in.

"We don't mind giving it away, it doesn't matter 'cause we don't see any money from single sales any more anyway."

The Maccabees' old-fashioned work ethic dictated an anti-rock 'n' roll approach to songwriting for the new record.

Throughout 2008 the band enforced a five-day working week – cutting loose at the weekends.

A new sound started to evolve as the band focused on writing to their strengths and they teamed up with producer Marcus Dravs, who worked on Arcade Fire's Neon Bible, for recording sessions in the UK and Paris.

"This record is more than a natural progression, it's something we're amazingly proud of and we feel it's a record that will stand up to anything and to any other record," White explains.

"I think there were a lot of people who thought we'd quite easily fall into the trap of being just another indie guitar band and I think those people will think twice about the band now.

"It's a lot more mature record, musically it's still in the same vein, just really cool pop songs and that's what the band's about."

White is joined in the Maccabees by singer and guitarists Orlando Weeks and Felix White, bassist Rupert Jarvis and drummer Sam Doyle.

The band's debut album Colour It In was released in May 2007, and last April they embarked on a low-key tour to road-test some of their new material.

"I don't think we felt any pressure from other people with this album," explains White.

"We put pressure on ourselves make sure it's the best thing we've ever done.

"We've made a record everyone is 100 per cent happy with. We ended up with 14 songs after two years of work and we didn't work on anything we didn't think would get there, rather than writing 100 songs and choosing from them.

"Wall Of Arms is amazing, it's a heavy guitar-driven horrible noisy thing and is sandwiched between a little folk song. The next single, Love You Better, is a great track and one of my favourites.

"We couldn't be more happy at what we've done.

"It felt like a long time ago that we wrote that first record, two years ago we felt we were ready to push it on, now we've done it."

Inspired by bands such as The Strokes and The Clash, White explains a proper group mentality is key to the band.

"I thought at first I was just gonna learn one bob Dylan song and I'd be happy," he jokes. "Everyone having their part and holding their position and coming together as a group is really important to us.

"It's more about the passion you put into it, you don't have to be a wizard on the guitar, if you want to do something you can achieve it by working at it.

"Everyone in the band is into different types of music and we've all been expanding on that."

White says the Maccabees will be concentrating on touring for the foreseeable future.

"We've done our writing, we're not gonna even start to think about writing songs again for about a year," he explains. "We need our time to go and play them, we just wanna play now nonstop."

The Maccabees play the Roadmender on Thursday. Tickets are sold out.

For more information visit www.themaccabees.co.uk.