When The Maccabees called time back in 2017, it felt like a band pulling the exit cord just as they’d finally reached the top of the summit. After a decade of graft and steady ascent, the South London quintet had scored their first number one album with 2015’s Marks To Prove It, played their first big boy festival headline set at the following year’s Latitude Festival, and then… done. Waving goodbye with three final shows at Alexandra Palace, the emotion in the air was heavy; behind the scenes they might have needed to step away, but their audience was far from ready to see them go.
And so, when the band announced their reunion back in October, it was with a feeling not of nostalgia but unfinished business. In the interim, frontman Orlando Weeks has launched a successful solo career; guitarist Felix White has become a multi-hyphenate author-musician-podcast host and more. Far from the ‘get the band back together to pay off the divorce’ undercurrent of this summer’s Oasis reunion, The Maccabees finally seem ready to claim the spoils - a forthcoming Glastonbury Park Stage headline next week ahead of August’s All Points East show (their biggest ever gig) - that they’d previously walked away from.
Kicking off the comeback with a teeny warm up show at Tufnell Park’s 600-capacity Dome, you can physically feel the love in the room, dripping off the insanely sweaty bodies determined to dance it out despite the sauna-like heat and ringing out into final cheers that carry on way past their usual welcome. When White declares “We’re The Maccabees” after an opening one-two-three of giddy debut album cuts Latchmere, Lego and X-Ray, his most simple of statements is greeted like a revelation. You can see from the visibly overwhelmed, beaming faces on stage that the opportunity to name themselves once more is not lost on any of them.
Weaving across their four records, from the dappled beauty of Kamakura to the youthful fizz of Precious Time to the full-body catharsis of Spit It Out, a few years away has done nothing to diminish the quality of the band’s canon. If only a few of their early peers managed to make it past the inaugural hurdles, then The Maccabees audibly progressed over their tenure; the doe-eyed whistles of early track Toothpaste Kisses wear their naivety with pride, while Grew Up At Midnight, from third album Given To The Wild, is epic and grandly ambitious. The big hitters - a rocket-powered Marks To Prove It and a final encore of Pelican - will easily fill the massive fields they’ve got coming over the summer.
Knitting it all together are themes of friendship and support, telling your nearest and dearest that you love them and embracing the fleeting moments in this funny old life. It’s an attitude that’s always made The Maccabees incredibly easy to root for, and that makes these songs - infused with so much heart and humanity - ring out all the sweeter with the added symbolism of a second chance taken. First announced as a victory lap, it’s hard not to see tonight as, in fact, the beginning of part two.
