The Maccabees have shared that they are “tempted” by the idea of recording new music together.
The indie band shared news of their comeback in October 2024, following an eight-year hiatus, and confirmed they would be topping the bill at Victoria Park in East London on August 24.
That show will also coincide with the 10th anniversary of their fourth and final album, ‘Marks To Prove It’, which was shared back in 2015. Visit here for any remaining tickets.
In the run up to their All Points East gig, Felix White and co. also reunited for a huge show at this year’s edition of Glastonbury and, before that, played their first gig back on June 20 at London’s The Dome for a charity gig in aid of MS Society.
Since the announcement of their return, the members have been consistently adamant that they are taking things one step at a time, and focusing solely on playing live, rather than working on any new music.
However, in a new interview, the band have said they are becoming increasingly tempted to get back into the studio.
When asked by The Independent how they are finding their time back together, Hugo White shared that “everyone’s in a good headspace and connecting with each other,” and that that dynamic has allowed the band to feel “stronger”.
Felix then chimed in, pondering if feeling “stronger” than ever “means we would make better music or worse music” than their previous discography.
Exploring how being at a different stage in life could affect the sound, Hugo quipped that anything new would most likely be “slower” than their previous work, while Felix continued: “There’s a good feeling about it. It’s tempting…”
While at their South London practice space, the band told NME that it felt like “no time has passed” in their eight-year hiatus. “It’s so strange,” Felix told us in January. “In the chunk [of time] from the last show, you could conceive of The Maccabees as a different existence, but as soon as we started playing, it was as if we hadn’t stopped.”
When asked about the possibility of new music then, he added: “The plan is to do [All Points East] and see how much we love it.” Sam Doyle then chimed in, jokingly saying that they were reluctant to look too far ahead as they “might hate each other by August.”
More recently, Felix said that announcing the band’s return “almost felt embarrassing” after their “definitive” break-up, and confirmed that they are “not writing anything at the moment”.
While at Glastonbury, the band spoke to NME again about playing their first show back together earlier this year. “There was a lot of feeling in that room. It surprised me, actually, because I was finding that on stage, in a split second, I was euphoric and then I was actually crying at Tufnell Park Dome and then feeling other things,” Felix said.
“You felt all this feeling inside your body that the action of playing the music brings out in us, and it was all happening in there and just felt amazing.”
At their Glasto set, The Maccabees were joined by Florence Welch, who provided guest vocals on ‘Love You Better’ before performing Florence + The Machine‘s ‘Dog Days Are Over’. NME gave the performance a full five stars and praised the slot as “their most euphoric show to date”.
For All Points East, they’ll be joined by Bombay Bicycle Club, The Cribs, Dry Cleaning, Nilüfer Yanya, The Murder Capital, Divorce, Prima Queen, CMAT, Black Country, New Road, Everything Everything, Sorry, Katy J Pearson, Youth Lagoon, TTSSFU, Max Baby and The Juice, Warmduscher, The Futureheads and Westside Cowboy.
In other Maccabees news, the band have launched ‘YALA! TV’ – a weekly video series featuring live music, interviews and more. They are also celebrating their reunion by re-releasing two of their albums: ‘Colour It In’ and ‘Given To The Wild’.
