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.
