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Wall Of Arms is an expansive, confident second album that takes The Maccabees from indie also-rans to genuine contenders.
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Wall of Arms is the meticulously evolved sound of a band aiming to bid to breathe life into British indie.
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With this record the Maccabees join the Horrors and Jack Peñate as supposedly "landfill indie" acts who've come back fighting with far superior second efforts.
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Wall Of Arms sounds mostly effortless and unstudied.
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Maccabees have not just merely avoided a sophomore goring with Wall Of Arms' bar-raising pop. They have got the crowd firmly back on their side in doing so.
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Wall of Arms is an album that will give more the more time you give it. It’s expansive without being overblown, meticulous without being tedious, and hints at even greater things come album three.
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Really, what you’re left with is an accomplished album, delivered with passion and feeling, that’s easy to acknowledge as pretty good--to admire, even--but hard to be seriously moved by.
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Q MagazineIt's too easy to mistake them for any number of other bands--Editors, Maximo Park, The Futureheads all spring to mind--but if it's not original, it's still done weell. [Jun 2009, p.125]
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UncutSinger Orlando Weeks' new themes of intimacy and dependence, add emotional scope to a band blossoming from their spindly beginnings into a meaty prospect capable of doing goth XTC, jolly Joy Divisiion, and sword-dancing Strokes. [Jun 2009, p.92]
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Each track in its own right has nothing inherently wrong with it, but put eleven of them together and it’s all a little one-dimensional.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 15 out of 17
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Mixed: 1 out of 17
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Negative: 1 out of 17
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Aug 5, 2013
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AlexFMay 27, 2009
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MCMay 23, 2009