The Maccabees - Colour It In

How time flies when you’re in love. It’s hard to believe that it’s been twelve whole months since ‘X-Ray’, The Maccabees’ very first single, and the first time they caught our eye. We couldn’t tell then, just what the future would hold; but we always knew that it would be something special.

Oh, but how special. Sure, we were charmed by ‘Latchmere’ and we swooned over ‘First Love’, but y’know, that was just meeing around. Teenage high spirits, if you will. But ‘Colour It In’ - The Maccabees’ debut album - this is the real thing. ‘Good Old Bill’ is a muffled, last-dance-at-the-disco slice of melancholy, while ‘O.A.V.I.P.’ brims with sweetness. Orlando Weeks’ voice is a keening, tentative, barely-there shiver that could run the risk of sounding insubstantial elsewhere, but on the heart-swelling ‘Precious Time’ and the lovely ‘Toothpaste Kisses’, it wrings the last drops of humanity from every note. ‘Colour It In’ still has the wide-eyed, youthful skittishness that made us fall for The Maccabees in the first place, but it’s also tempered with a touch of grown-up sadness, and an acknowledgement of things greater than themselves; a bit of commitment, you could say.

Who knew this silly little fling would last, Maccabees? And who’d have thought that we’d be able to celebrate our first anniversary with possibly the finest scamp-pop album of the year? We know it’s still early days, but we can only hope that it’s going to last…