TLC vs. The Maccabees: Precious Time in NYC
Posted by Jess. D on October 5, 2009
Orlando and Hugo of The Maccabees, Backstage at Mercury Lounge for TLC.
NYC was lucky to get two shows from The Maccabees this summer where the UK indie rockers showcased material from their brilliant sophomore record, Wall of Arms. TLC was very lucky to get to sit down with vocalist/lyricist Orlando Weeks and guitarist Hugo White, albeit in the hottest room ever inside Mercury Lounge, before their headlining gig. The guys were humble and shy jokesters, Orlando barely able to sit still without fidgeting with a plastic cup (which he then wore on his ear – we missed the photo opportunity for that one!)
After a summer of playing triumphant sets at Glastonbury and the festival circuit, the South London boys returned home Saturday night to play their largest headlining show to date at Brixton Academy (review+photos here). Don’t miss The Maccabees on their current UK tour, and later this month the band head to Malawi, Africa to take part in the Lake of Stars festival.
MP3: The Maccabees – Love You Better or zShare
MP3: The Maccabees – Can You Give It (Dodworth Colliery MW Brass Band Rendition via Guardian) or zShare
> Welcome to New York! This is the worst summer weather ever. I feel bad for anyone that’s here right now and isn’t from here because it’s usually nice!
HW: We have been here before and it is lovely but there’s just so much rain right now.
OW: I kind of enjoy the apocalyptic survival of the fittest thing. I’ve bought so many pairs of socks.
> Have you guys had any time to do any cool New York things?
HW: Yeah, we went around Central Park yesterday.
OW: I’ve had a really good look around actually. We’ve been saving up and I took my girlfriend to the Gansevoort Hotel for dinner last night as a present and it was a real treat. We went to the Meatpacking District and the P.S. 1 Museum – I’ve had a really good time.
‘I’m just really glad to be in New York. It’s really hard not to gush about it but I am that happy’. – Orlando
> You went to Queens!
OW: Yeah! That’s where we’re staying actually.
> I’m from Queens so that’s very cool. Where in Queens?
OW: Umm, The Quality Inn?
HW and OW: It’s not quality!
OW: Do not stay there. I would not advertise it. It’s rubbish. It’s crazy – it’s like next to us are transvestites and smackheads. We’ve made really good friends w/ them though!
> That’s a really nice ring.
OW: Thanks very much. A friend of mine, Dominic, made it.
> Are you guys originally from South London? Whereabouts?
HW: Yeah, we’re originally from Clapham. We all grew up around Clapham Common.
> Did you all go to school together?
HW: No – well Felix and I are bothers and Felix was friends with Orlando’s brother and that sort of thing. We just kind of knew each other and decided to start a band.
> So then you relocated to Brighton?
OW: Well, I went to university there and everyone else came cause I said it was nice.
Hugo: Yeah I think we all needed to finish school and then it seemed like a good place to get the band going properly. Everyone’s back in London now.
> Do you feel like London and Brighton have affected your creative synergy at all? Being in different environments?
OW: Not for me. I’ve never felt like a place necessarily made anything. I’ve always felt people were the thing and at the time, that’s where my friends were. Now my friends are back in London, I’m back in London and that’s my home.
> How did you come to work w/ Markus Dravs who produced Wall of Arms?
OW: Well we sent some demos out and he was one of the people who got back to us and said he really liked it a lot and that he wanted to work with us.
> Was he the top choice producer that you wanted to work with?
OW: Yeah, we kinda knew that if we went with him then he would make the songs sound as good as they could.
HW: It was one of those things where we met a lot of producers – it was like a 3-4 month constant headache of meeting producers and speaking to them on the phone. Within 5 minutes of meeting Markus, we knew he was it. And maybe that’s because he didn’t really agree with us.
‘That first record was just so straight down the line for us. We didn’t have any grand ambitions other than writing songs and playing live.’ – Hugo
> You don’t just want a “yes-man” around…
HW: Right, exactly. And he helped put us in the right direction and helped us make the record that we wanted to make.
> The process of finding a producer to work with — is that something that you researched or did the label bring them to you?
HW: I think to an extent we sort of worked w/ the label in creating a list of people and went through it and listened to stuff and there were obvious choices but we got really lucky.
> Correct me if I’m completely off point on this but this is my interpretation: Colour It In seemed to be a very sort of self-contained record full of restless energy and now Wall of Arms seems like an expansive explosion of sounds. Do you agree? And what do you attribute to that new sound?
HW: Well for me it’s a whole different thing. That first record was just so straight down the line for us. We didn’t have any grand ambitions other than writing songs and playing live and getting a record deal. And we went in to record it with the view of it sounding just like a really good live show, just tight. There was no ulterior motive, if that makes sense. So we learned a lot through that and I think as soon as we finished that we knew that there was more and we could push it further. For the new record, we had more of a vision of what we wanted to do.
> Do you think you might stay on a similar path with new material or keep on experimenting?
OW: No idea. Well, what we did with Bag of Bones on this record was everyone kind of wrote their own thing separately on Garage Band or whatever…
HW: Don’t say Garage Band, say Logic!
OW: I don’t know how to use Logic! I made mine on a tape recorder. Then everyone brought it together and we figured out how to make it meld together. I think that might be a kind of interesting way of trying to write songs in the future.
HW: Still seems like a long way away cause this record just came out and we spent a year and locked ourselves away so we’re not really thinking about writing more stuff right now.
> On Wall of Arms did you have more of a sense of freedom? Kind of like kids in a candy store wanting to add as many different instruments and new sounds as possible?
HW: I think there were points early on when we thought we were going to do all these things and then we definitely had to talk ourselves out of it while making the record and not making mistakes like putting orchestras all over it. But we do have a brass section and they’re the guys from Arcade Fire who came in and played for us.
OW: We keep saying they’re in Arcade Fire but I don’t think they’re actually in Arcade Fire, I think they’ve played for Arcade Fire
HW: Yeah, they’re Arcade Fire’s live brass section.
> There are so many people in Arcade Fire, no one can keep it straight!
OW: We could say we were in Arcade Fire and no one could prove us different.
‘I just don’t see the point in putting all the work into making something sound right and then misrepresenting it.’ – Orlando
> You were mentioning how each of you are starting to bring different things to the table, so how does it work w/ your lyrics? Does someone usually bring a melody first?
OW: It’s different every time but I think that when I’m writing lyrics I’m fairly sure what the subject matter will be and then you spot something or you remember little phrases or little sayings from a film that you’ve seen or from a soap opera or a book or magazine. Really just a phrase that resonates and you think it has something more going for it than just its original context. Or even an image. I always find its better to go and do something completely unrelated and that way you might find something that you hadn’t thought of before. We were going to the Natural History Museum in Manchester to see the dinosaur display and we learned how redundant their hands were and my girlfriend had had her appendix out and it’s kind of like that was the same thing. Dinosaurs is kind of about redundancy and a little bit about things becoming unnecessary and hanging on. Evolution and hangers-on made sense with what I wanted to write about. That’s kind of how I do it.
> Can you tell me a little bit about the art direction of your band? How much in control of your aesthetic are you and how important is it to you to have that control?
OW: We have complete control. We don’t have complete control of the budget which is the only thing otherwise we’d be doing very different things. We’re in control of our videos and come up with the concepts more often than not. When things are crazy and we have no time we’ll get a director in. We see doing our own videos as our opportunity to art direct.
HW: Part of it is how you present yourself.
> Because of that, you’re seen as more of an art-rock band. Is that okay with you?
OW: I don’t mind. I think it’s a lot more commonplace than perhaps people think. I just don’t see the point in putting all the work into making something sound right and then misrepresenting it.
HW: We hear about bands that do videos and stuff like that and they just totally turn up on the day and ask what they’re doing. It’s crazy, it’s mad.
> Like a performance video…
OW: We’ve done one performance video and that was so tricky. The other thing is that if we have control, we can make sure that we hardly have to be in it at all which is much better for us cause we feel pretty uncomfortable being filmed or photographed.
HW: That was part of the album cover as well, like that thing of being on the cover but not really being there. We felt we deserved to be on the cover of this record and it was a way of doing it without it being like a band photo.
> So that’s actually you on the cover?
OW: That’s us under paint. This artist, Boo Ritson, paints you with household paints and takes a photograph.
> We’ve been talking to a lot of different artists about the role of technology, more the internet and social media. A lot of artists say that it’s important to be accessible to their fans and other say that mystery and separation is important. You guys have an active twitter and YouTube channel. How do you feel about that sort of exposure and being so attainable?
HW: I dunno really, I think it’s difficult. For a band like us sometimes it’s good to keep people updated. Some of it’s good and some of it’s bad.
‘I always find its better to go and do something completely unrelated and that way you might find something that you hadn’t thought of before.’ – Orlando
> Do you use those things in your personal lives?
OW: Certainly not. I don’t have a private Facebook or MySpace. If I want to speak to my friends I’ll call them up or go and see them. I find the whole thing kind of alarming.
HW: We’ve got a friend who works for us who’s sort of running those sites which is nice cause people can send us messages and it will always get to us. He’ll forward it in an email or whatever and that sort of thing is really nice.
> It’s sort of a necessary evil. It’s kind of important though as a band to have that kind of communication.
HW: Yeah and I think we are that sort of band. We hang about after shows and talk to people and if people are waiting after a gig, the first thing we do is go out and talk to them and that’s the way it is. We’re not trying to hide from anyone. I think it’s nice, you know, if someone likes a band and they wanna say something you should listen to them.
> Do you have a close knit group of other musicians in London that you hang out with or collaborate with?
OW: We don’t really think about it like that. We just have friends, you know. Some of them are in bands, some of them are postmen…
> Well for instance we saw Jack Penate recently and his drummer was wearing a Wall of Arms t-shirt.
OW: Oh was he? That’s because I live with him! He stole it!
> You guys are playing Glasto in a couple of days. How many times have you played there? How do you feel about it?
OW: We played once 2 years ago. I’m really nervous.
HW: We’re playing like the second to main stage so it’s the biggest gig we’ll have ever done. It’s nerve-wracking.
Orlando: There’s a lot of weight on Tiny Face’s shoulders. That’s our sound guy by the way. He’s very good.
> The last time you were in NYC was quite a while ago.
OW: Yeah we played CMJ in 2007 and that was just like 2 gigs and then the year before that we were doing this Bloc Party thing with them for 10 days.
> How do you feel so far having played a gig already here the other night?
HW: We had an amazing gig the other night [at Music Hall of Williamsburg]. We had such a good time.
OW: I’m just really glad to be in New York. It’s really hard not to gush about it but I am that happy. It’s so rare that we get to do a gig in a city and stay there. I had the whole of yesterday to go and embrace the opportunity as opposed to feeling like we’ve missed out, so I’m absolutely over the moon. It’s also great to play with Hatcham Social again. They came on tour with us for a bit in England and we think they’re really fantastic and sweethearted boys.
> Are you going to play anywhere else in the States this summer?
OW: I don’t think so. I think this is like our one opportunity. Depending on if someone puts our record out in America, then we might get to come back.
HW: With this record, we’re trying to do more in Europe and America. We didn’t really do that on the last record and it’s something we regret. It wasn’t through choice but we didn’t get to do much in Europe and America. With this record we feel like we’ve got a better record really to do it with. It’s really a case of being given the chances or the opportunity to do that.
> Thanks so much guys! Best of luck for the rest of your time in NYC and all the festivals.
OW: Thanks for coming down and sweating it out with us!
Mike said
Nice interview. They are lovely guys. From my home town of Brighton actually.
Pop by our blog, The Recommender, some time and say hi.
Mike
http://therecommender.net
Amy said
Ahhh, very good interview! I looooove the maccabees. I actually flew out from San Francisco, just to catch their show at Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklynn which was amazing. Wall of Arms is beyond belief superb…so Im crossing my fingers they will tour the US of A soon!!!!