Interview The Maccabees’ Felix White talks All Points East 2025 headline: “I feel like we’re better than we ever were”

Hey Felix, how are you doing - the big week has finally arrived!
We’ve been waiting for so long, putting everything together, and it’s all happened so quickly. The mechanics of getting it all back together again, from asking ‘does everyone want to do it?’ to getting the songs dusted down and all that… It’s just crazy how long a process it’s been. But it’s a good sign that it’s flying by now we’re doing it - if it was taking forever, it would be because we weren’t enjoying it, I guess. 

How long has it been since that first rehearsal, when you all got back into the room together for the first time again? 
We did a few days a week in January, just to make sure it all felt right, and it did - it all felt really natural, really quickly. It was so weird; it was like the years between then and the last Ally Pally show hadn’t really happened. Ru [Jarvis]’s pedal board - because he hadn’t played bass since the last one - still had all the confetti in it from Ally Pally! It was so strange. Because the time since the last gig and then, it felt like another life; I couldn’t remember even being in Maccabees, but then as soon as we [started rehearsing], it was like it had never gone away. 

And how have you found the experience of moving from that rehearsal room to playing live in front of crowds again? 
The really weird feeling is that, when you play the songs, you really get a sense of people’s lives [having been lived] alongside them. Last night in Dublin, for example, I spotted quite a few people who were really crying their eyes out. And I know that feeling, so you’re getting a sort of parallel sense of [the emotion] people channel into music generally, and I guess into our music. 

There’s something really emotional about reunions, for sure - you could feel that at the Oasis shows too. 
I had the same thing with Oasis - I’ve seen that three times. It is weird, because I sort of know what that feeling is, to love their music so much, but it’s so evocative of a particular time in your life that it pierces you so sharply that you’ll just burst into tears immediately. Sometimes you don’t even know why. So it was quite cool to go and see Oasis and have that feeling - obviously on a much smaller scale! - that we’re doing our version of that, that our music means a lot to people. 

I guess one similarity is that it feels very current and purposeful; it is nostalgia in a sense, but it also somehow feels vital and in the moment. In our case, I feel like we’re better than we ever were. I guess you always hope to feel like that, but it feels like in the time we had away, the songs have almost grown while we’ve left them alone. 

Your Glastonbury show certainly felt like that - as if you headlining the Park Stage was entirely right for 2025. 
A lot of Land [Weeks]’s lyrics as well - a lot of the subject matter is about getting older, and growing up; there’s a lot of that stuff happening. So there is sometimes a supernatural sense that we weren’t even meant to play these songs until now.  When I think about them in the past, they were sort of growing pains - and now, with the perspective of the catalogue, it feels like… I was about to say that they’re ripe [laughs]. It’s almost like it’s taken this long for them to really feel right. 

Has there been a particular point at which you’ve felt ‘oh shit, this is real’? 
Good question… There are certain moments where you do generally just get goosebumps. I always think when we do ‘Kamakura’ - because the chorus is “best friends forgive you, best friends forget” - that one always strikes me down a little bit. I’m getting it a lot just seeing people’s faces, really; if you do catch someone who’s having a moment and being consoled, or crying, it’s really fucking mad. I don’t know when else in life you’d see or get that, especially to be stood in front of someone playing music while they’re doing that. 

That’s such a good point - even if someone has a really powerful connection to a film, for example, the actors aren’t ever going to watch them watch it. 
Yeah! Or very rarely will people be breaking down at a play… and reading a book is a very solitary thing, the writer will very rarely witness that reaction. So to do that at a gig in communion; there is something almost religious about it, do you know what I mean? It’s a really powerful thing. 

And what a gig it’s shaping up to be! The lineup is a properly stacked indie disco day… 
That was one of the first reasons this whole thing came about - All Points East came to us and said that we could curate the bill, so it was really difficult to turn that down. To have all those bands in one space… we really wanted to make it a day that was really tightly tailored to what people who love The Maccabees would love, or who we love. And we pretty much got it spot on. Obviously you can’t get everyone you want, but it’s really got that feeling of bands that we grew up with, or bands that we worked with in that interim period… I think it’s going to be a difficult one for people to see everything! 

It’s a brilliant mix of old indie favourites and contemporaries of yours, and then a crop of exciting new bands coming through… 
Yeah! Bombay [Bicycle Club], The Cribs, Everything Everything, The Futureheads kind of cater to that part of it, then Black Country, New Road and Dry Cleaning and Sorry… I think it’s for people like us that are really passionate about guitar music, and what can be achieved in guitar bands. Hopefully it’s just the place to be! 

And for a few years it has felt like there’s been a bit of an absence of bands - or at least solo artists have been reigning supreme - so APE feels a bit like heralding a return to a golden age of guitar music. 
Obviously, there’s productive tension in bands which makes them great, but also breaks bands. It’s been nice with a bit of space to go back into The Maccabees, and you can really appreciate what the other person brought to it that made it something bigger than the sum of its parts. I think that’s the thing that’s great about guitar bands; the really great ones have something indefinable that no one person could have conceived of. There’s something a bit magical about that. Rather than the highly curated solo artist stuff - which is also brilliant - but it’s one person’s very clean, clear vision of something. 

I think with bands, sometimes there’s a messiness that you can’t really contain or that you’re not in control of, which makes it exciting, because you know it can’t last forever. It’s just got an energy to it, so it’s nice to be putting on a festival that is openly in love with that. 

And alongside all that, you’ve also got the YALA TV series running in tandem / in anticipation of the festival itself!
YALA actually did a stage at APE for The Strokes day maybe 5, 6, 7 years ago, which was so great - we had BC Camplight headline, YAK… loads of bands. YALA was one of the things I started when The Maccabees ended because I was at a bit of a loss at what I was going to do with my life. So, me and my friend Morad came up with this idea that a lot of the things that existed when The Maccabees started had been stripped away - in guitar music especially - so we should build a thing like that. So it only felt right that [YALA] was going to be involved in some way with this, really. 

I’ve always wanted to do that, because as soon as The Maccabees ended, I was in awe of all the bands we work with. From the start of YALA, there’s loads that have gone on to be absolutely massive - Wunderhorse, IDLES, and whoever else. But even those who haven’t achieved that level of critical mass, I’m in awe of them too. 

It wouldn’t have felt right to do [APE] without sort of sending the elevator down too, do you know what I mean? 

The Maccabees will play All Points East Festival, the second weekend of which takes place from 22nd - 24th August in Victoria Park, London. Find out more and get last minute tickets at allpointseastfestival.com.

Tags: Features, Interviews, All Points East, Festivals, The Maccabees