The Maccabees + Trailer Trash Tracys – Brixton Academy 26/01/12

First, guitars. Many people have apparently spent the first month of 2012 suggesting that guitar music is dead, or ill, or on the wane, or something else equally fatuous. And by “many” I mean a small handful, and by “people” I mean journalists, and by “journalists” I mean music hacks old enough to know better, with a vested interest in such an observation being true.

But in leaving the term “guitar music” tantalisingly undefined, the argument falls apart: from the enduring success of Download/Sonisphere, to the Gallagher brothers (and their followers) bothering the album charts with rock-slanted LPs, and the fact that one of 2011’s best-selling artists (Ed Sheeran) strums an acoustic, it’s not hard to pick holes in the theory – if everyone else is going to be vague, so am I.

What the hacks mean is that a certain strain of nominally credible rock music – exciting of hair, chiselled of cheek, comfortably edgy of opinion, beloved of (say) NME – is currently on its uppers. But one band who definitely fit the above description, albeit unassumingly, might just take 2012, and here’s why.

The Maccabees’ UK class-of-’06 peers have variously disappeared (Franz Ferdinand/Editors/The Zutons/The Fratellis), run out of what little steam they had (Hard-Fi/Kaiser Chiefs/The Kooks), become a laughing stock (Razorlight), opted for the mainstream (Keane), or imploded (The Ordinary Boys/The Long Blondes). You get the idea.

Only Arctic Monkeys have really stepped up, with The Horrors doing their own thing in the corner and a pair of Clubs (Bombay Bicycle Cluband Two Door Cinema Club ) repping for the next wave. (Let’s not devote too much to The Vaccines, who are only holding guitars because they couldn’t learn the dance routines.)

So who’s to stop The Maccabees cleaning up in 2012? On the strength of this, their second Brixton headline show – they last stood in front of the sloping auditorium in November 2009 – not a soul.

It doesn’t hurt that the support act cook up a tiny storm to try bringing the mainly Facebooking crowd to simmering point. By name, Trailer Trash Tracys sound like they ought to peddle oil-stained Psychobilly – but they’re actually modern shoegazers through and through. With a female singer channelling Man Who Fell To Earth-era Thin White Duke and a bassist who could only be more laidback if he were on the sofa at home, tweeting his notes to a stand-in, the quartet drink deep from Spectrum & the Cocteau Twins’ well.

Inevitably the dum, dum-dum, tshhh ‘Be My Baby’ beat puts in an appearance on new single ‘Candy Girl’ but it’s welcome in such nimble hands. Singer Suzanne Aztoria’s Aztec-patterned jacket and bright red trousers stand out but for all their deliberate Twin Peaks-evoking musical style, Trailer Trash Tracys will not likely headline a place this size till we can hear her lyrics. When played live, deliciously languid final song ‘Wish You Were Red’ sounds so much like The Jesus & Mary Chain’s remix of Sugarcubes’ ‘Birthday’ I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d deliberately used that song as a career-making stately pacemaker. There are far worse templates to pick.

The Academy is now so packed the smokers aren’t bothering to leave, resulting in several giggling pockets of crouching puffers dotted around the place. A pre-headline soundtrack of Eno-era Bowie, Bowie-era Lou, coke-era Mac and split-era Beatles adds to the party mood: this feels like a reunion. It’s already obvious tonight is An Event: we’re witnessing the moment The Maccabees vault the fence from jealously guarded fandom to “you can all join in” inclusiveness. The six arrive, sans fanfare, and while nobody’s ever going to wear a Maccabees costume to a Noughties fancy-dress party, they do at least display a certain matey togetherness.

The cheers, chants and grins that greet (surely) breakthrough album Given to the Wild’s first three tracks, delivered verbatim, call back to the palpable devotion on display at British Sea Power’s early shows: I half expect to see clumps of foliage being passed around the pit like the leafy crowdsurfers of yore during the Yoshimi-era Flaming Lips-ish ‘Feel To Follow’. The LP’s euphoric rush is amplified fivefold in the live arena, resulting in a basement rave-like intimacy belying the venue’s size. Like BSP, though, despite their sense of melody The Maccabees may yet find themselves suffering from a lack of radio-friendly hooks.

The honourable exception, the ecstatically received ‘Pelican’, comes later – a massive, perfectly constructed, actually pretty odd and yet catchy as hell pop song that simultaneously calls to mind Silver Sun’s ‘Lava’ and Yeasayer. Recent interviews have had the band suggesting that mainstream success would unbind them creatively, Radiohead-style, and much of tonight hints that there’s more to The Maccabees than the plain ol’ singalonga-Arcade-Fire of ‘Precious Time’ and ‘Can You Give It’. One thing’s for sure: this room truly believes in them, as evidenced by the man next to me licking his friend’s phone in approval of him recording the latter tune.

In some ways, tonight shows The Maccabees to be the Everything Everything that could: a less ridiculous Muse (not a criticism, in this case), a more palatable alternative to the alternative. The sound is pin-sharp – one benefit of a sympathetic, long-term major label relationship, along with a real opportunity to nurture a devoted fanbase and grow up with them. The kids in their early twenties who know every last word tonight have likely been following The Maccabees since sixth form, and such bonds – like adopting your dad’s struggling football team – are tough to break and easy to underestimate.

Knowing ‘Pelican’ will be hard to top, there follows a sharp drop in tempo for (sorry to go on about it, but…) more Win Butler vocals on first finale ‘Love You Better’. I don’t think Orlando Weeks is deliberately ripping off the Arcade Fire singer, however – these signifiers sometimes just creep in, absorbed subconsciously, and there’s definitely enough going on tonight to reveal The Maccabees as more than copyists. There’s a soul to what they do, and a deep connection with the crowd that’ll take them wherever they want to go.

Encores of new album standout ‘Unknow’ (a brave choice, its hypnotic psyche-rock almost doping the room) and ‘First Love’ (crowd = batshit insane, screaming every last syllable… ah, I get it now) lead to an oddly reflective take-home tune. New album finale ‘Grew Up At Midnight’ recasts The Maccabees as a strange Coldplay analogue: it sure feels like sentimental stadium rock at the time, but it’s forgotten the moment it ends. “Doing the best we can,” sings Orlando. Oh no you’re not.

Photo by Jason Williamson. See more pictures from The Maccabees’ Brixton show.