Two years ago, Alex Turner said that Rock n’ Roll was making a comeback. Self-indulgent, maybe, but when you consider the ever-rising indie-rock band The Maccabees, it is easy to see where he is coming from. Sitting down on a Friday morning with the band’s guitarist Hugo White, I was very keen to find out what he thought set the band apart from the rest.
“I don’t think there is uniqueness in the way that we write our music,” Hugo argues, getting off to a candid start, “Every band has their own thing and I think we’ve developed as band through our records. I think that people that were into the band at the start have stuck with us and given us a load of support. Our first record wasn’t really a hit that defined us and we haven’t been sucked into that thing where people see that we’ve changed and don’t like us anymore. We’ve always felt like we can do what we wanted to do. I think the only reason we’re set apart from anyone is because we always work as collaboration. We couldn’t be what we do as solo effort or as any other setup.” Their latest single ‘Something Like Happiness’ has proved this method to be a success, with the melodic layers of their sound showing a rare musical unity.
“You realise that there is a lot in what you might see as mundane, and things that don’t seem to be special have a real beauty to them.”
So how does Marks To Prove It differ from previous The Maccabees albums? “I mean, in comparison to the previous album it was an exercise in stripping things down,” White states. “Given To The Wild really experimented with effects, trying to create a landscape. A lot of the effort with the writing in this record was trying to stay away from that and create these landscapes in different ways by really focusing on the songs.” This new album is the first record that the band has produced themselves in their own studio in South London, and there has been a lot of suggestion that the place of recording – Elephant and Castle – has had a significant impact on the lyricism of the album.
Questioning White on the location, I was surprised to hear that he thought that their location had an impact on the sound of the album beyond solely lyrical touch-points. “Lyrically, the amount of time we were spending in our studio made it become a significant part of our lives. Orlando [Weeks] would often incorporate overheard conversations into the lyrics. You realise that there is a lot in what you might see as mundane, and things that don’t seem to be special have a real beauty to them. It was the same thing with the record cover – the Faraday Memorial – thousands of people drive past it everyday, probably without thinking about it or taking another look. But it looks so strong and glorious in this photo and by putting it on the record cover it gives a totally new way of looking at it and celebrates something that people see regularly without noticing.”
“the piano in the studio became like the third guitar.”
Speaking in great detail about the amount of thought that went into the instrumentation on the album, White notes that, “the piano in the studio became like the third guitar.” Interjecting, I inquire into why the band chose to incorporate piano parts instead of just layering a third guitar, something bands do countless times. “When we moved into the studio it had been derelict for quite some time and we had to rip up the carpet and make it liveable,” he explains. “The one thing that was in the studio was the piano and it only seemed right for it to become part of the record. Jesus and the Mary Chain had the studio before we did, about 20 years ago, and we just recently got in contact with someone that worked for them and they sent us some photos of the band sitting in the studio with this piano. It is quite nice that this piano has had a real life and has naturally made its way into it.”
White has stated in the past that he wants the band to sound like a ‘band in a room’, but how does that translate to a festival field? “The songs that we’ve been playing live such as ‘Spit It Out’ and ‘World War One’ directly translate live in a natural way,” he offers. “There is a sort-of flip-side to the record that we haven’t had the chance to play yet and we’re trying to start filtering these into our UK tour. In November, Reading, Leeds and Glastonbury were incredible – biggest things we’ve ever done. It was quite surreal coming out of two years in isolation and playing to all those people. After two years of not doing anything, you don’t even know people are going to still be interested. Now we’re back into trying to get used to that.”
Finishing the interview, I asked White what advice he has for young bands starting out today. “It is a difficult thing really,” he replies, spending several seconds pondering the question. “Everything has changed so much since when we were at that point and it was very difficult to work alone when we were at that point because we didn’t all these programs on laptops that you could use. We never relied on making demos like that. We were always in a room with each other in rehearsals. If anyone thinks it is the kind of thing that you can just do at a rehearsal here and there and maybe do a gig once in a while, then they are wrong. You just have to put everything into it.”
