REVIEW - NME AWARDS SHOW TOUR - THE MACCABEES, 02 ACADEMY BRIXTON

THANK you Tubelines. I had big plans on Saturday and they did not involve maniacal drivers and snarly abusive teenage passengers on packed rail replacement buses.
The disastrous state of the weekend’s transport set me back a good couple of hours and I missed the first three acts on the NME Awards Tour’s final show at Brixton Academy.
No Big Pink, The Drums or Bombay Bicycle Club for me.
So it was fitting compensation when the sublime Maccabees took control. Any fears they may not have reached headline status quite yet were allayed in seconds as track after track was sung back to them in some mass choral tribute. Their rounder sound filled the Academy in a way they failed to at the Roundhouse last year.
Orlando Weeks’ deceptive vocals, apt for the faraway love song Toothpaste Kisses, expanded to impossible heights for the rousing Can You Give It, establishing just how accomplished the boys have become.
High points – their chef-d’oeuvre No Kind Words, the surprise appearance of Edwyn Collins for Rip It Up, and the impromptu multi-band stage invasion as the tour closed.

THE MACCABEES ON EASTENDERS, FULHAM FC AND CLEAN SOCKS

THE Queen Vic’s jukebox, long-harboured desires to be Fulham’s official chippie and the virtues of clean socks – this is what’s on Felix White’s mind as he speaks to me from his tour bus.
The Maccabees are in the midst of their NME Awards tour, which culminates in a much-awaited headline show in Brixton with Bombay Bicycle Club, The Big Pink and The Drums on Saturday.
But Felix is thinking about other things, like how he’s going to deal with his mischievous bandmates.
“Our only actual form of recreation is that Nick, our tour manager, has bought a bouncy ball so we need to find better things to do,” he says. “We’ve known each other for such a long time now that pleasantries go out the window a little bit. I think we still get on great.”

But he admits, they can wind him up: “(They) sometimes try to make as much noise as they possibly can – there’s the ambulance song. When they feel like it they get a piano and make it go ‘nee-naw, nee-naw’ for as long as they can. I still haven’t worked out how to get over that because if you ignore them they keep doing it louder, if you tell them off and say please stop it they keep doing it louder, if you leave they keep doing it louder so you can hear it from the other side of the bus. Sometimes I do sound a bit like a granddad.”
Right now, Felix is trying to read Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses.
“I’ve read the first page about 40 times so I’m going to try and actually read it this tour,” he says. “I don’t know what stopped me – probably short-term memory loss.”

We last saw The Maccabees at Islington’s Union Chapel, one of my top gigs of last year.
Felix says: “It was one of the most foreign experiences for us. When we’re doing it properly you can cover nerves or being timid with noise. It’s so stripped bare that it’s terrifying, but I really enjoyed it. For some reason we decided to do the acoustic thing so quiet, at the level of what mice would speak, so that just adds to the tension.”
The band have been played in the background in EastEnders, a sure sign they’ve arrived, but Felix isn’t happy yet.
“Eastenders – that’s the money shot,” he says. “That’s when you know you’ve made it, but we’ve only been in the caff, we need to be in the Queen Vic. If anyone who works for EastEnders reads (this) then please have us in the background in the Vic when Ronnie’s arguing with Peggy or something.”
Felix says they didn’t have to convince actor Mat Horne to appear in their video for No Kind Words.
“He’s been coming to shows and we sort of became friends through that,” says Felix. “He wanted to be in a video. We had a small budget to do No Kind Words and Mat was just happy to do it for nothing. That was that really – a favour both ways.”

If he hadn’t been a rock star, you might have spotted Felix outside Fulham’s infamous Craven Cottage stadium.
“I wanted to be a football manager, then I decided it would be better if I ran the official mobile fish and chip shop for Fulham Football Club,” he says. “I’d be outside the grounds and it would follow the team everywhere. Everyone would know if you’re a Fulham supporter you’d eat that fish and chips.”
So, any strange requests on their rider? “The most important thing we ask for is socks,” says Felix. “You can’t really put into words how panicked you can be if you’re halfway through a tour and you haven’t got any clean socks.”

* The Maccabees’ Wall of Arms re-issue with five bonus tracks including Empty Vessels with Roots Manuva and a cover of Roy Orbison’s I Drove All Night is out now.