The Maccabees – Wall of Arms

Posted by Michael in Archive on 05 4th, 2009 | one response

the-maccabees

And so to the final post that I will make about these London-based post-punk romantics. The album is out on this Bank Holiday Monday, and it’s great.

There’s been plenty said already about the fact that they have roped in the Arcade Fire’s producer, that they’re trying to “get serious”, that they may have over-reached themselves, but this is simply the sound of a great art-pop band waving goodbye to the nostalgia that powered their first album and embracing their talent.

Wall of Arms is a collection of eleven indie-pop missives so frequently touching that it appears to have been recorded solely on guitars tuned with heartstrings: the record announces its intentions early on with the sweeping “Love You Better” and twists through its running time without an ounce of fat on it: “No Kind Words” is a sleek post-punk whippet; “William Powers” flies upwards buoyed by a mass of choral voices, and “Seventeen Hands” is a family saga set to a heart-stopping musical backdrop. It draws to a close with the elegaic “Bag of Bones”, and by the end of this record you feel that you’ve lost something that can only be replaced with another play.

For the record, the references to the Arcade Fire appear to start and finish with the fact that there are some instruments that aren’t guitars somewhere in there, and the odd glorious chorus that makes you feel happy to be alive. In the album’s title cut, Orlando declares “I have faith….oh, I have faith/in those who put up with me”; if this wonderful record is the shape of things to come, then he’ll be keeping the faith for a very long time.

The Maccabees – Can You Give It

The Maccabees – Wall of Arms

The Maccabees – Seventeen Hands