To Maccabee or not to Maccabee? (3.02.10)

Report Submitted By Special Agent Kiev
Dept. GSL! Undercover Reporting Team
Operation: Maccabees
Location: The Regal, Oxford

So after a long day, I had to make my way up to Oxford on The Oxford Tube. Uncomfortable seats, rain beating down onto the road and a long, long journey. Not an ideal way to spend your evening, but it was what was at the other side that kept us going, it was the reason for our tiresome travels. The Maccabees at The Regal.

We arrived at the venue to find a queue full of what seemed like school outing. The door staff the grumpiest I have ever seen acting like teachers or members of the fun police. The main bar was closed so we have to go to a tiny room at the top for a drink. That however was so full we decided to go out and get a pint in the pub opposite. But, in now typical school teacher fashion, if you left the venue you were not allowed back in! People were even being I-D’d if they wanted to leave for a cigarette. It was all becoming a bit to like a prison camp for my liking but we stayed with it in anticipation to see both what ridiculous rule they were going to up with next and to see the band.

After another run in with staff allowing only one drink at a time and our patients run out with this Dictator-esq regime of door policy finally the Maccabees started.

The set was an epic wall of sound with the brass band in the background. The pure noise that is evident in the Markus Dravs recorded Wall of Arms is on full show, but annoyingly not to full affect as the sound engineer was obviously not used to the controls in front of him. The sound just became a mesh. No that any of the kids at the front cared as they moshed for the full hour and twenty that they played. The Maccabees themselves were great and their songs have this brilliant balance of tender adolescence and brutally epic maturity and this is what carried them through the night, the younger members of the audience belting out tracks such as ‘First Love’ and ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ while the older generation picked up on the musicianship of the Maccabees latest offering.

All in all it was a great night with a great band playing just a shit venue with shit staff. If it was any lesser of a band it could have been enough to tarnish the night but Maccabees had it spot on.

www.myspace.com/themaccabees