Tuesday, December 05, 2006

The Maccabees, ULU, London, 5.12.06

It must be utterly exhausting being in The Maccabees. They rattle through tonight’s 45-minute set at a speed that makes ‘breakneck’ seem sluggish. “Do they have any slow songs?” I ask someone from the band’s record label. “Not really,” comes the reply. It’s something of an understatement. The last person to fire off guitar chords at this kind of machine gun pace was The Wedding Present’s David Gedge – see Why Are You Being So Reasonable Now? from 1987. But while The Maccabees are a band that operate with the accelerator floored at all times, there’s romance and emotion as well as aggression. X Ray sounds like an anthem in the making. Jack Penate expresses his approval by pogoing maniacally throughout the song. Exhilarating, high octane fun.

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