Kirstiecat | Blog

Schubas Tavern in Chicago 6/9/7

To help launch the spectacular night of British music with Noisettes as the headliner, the five piece Maccabees whose home lies in Brighton opened with an incredibly catchy set that jangled more in the realm of Brit rock than Brit pop. The first opener, local Chicago band Reds and Blue were also great as usual and helped excite the crowd with their complicated keyboard melodies and bassoon playing.

There were three girls between the ages of 18 and 21 yrs. that had waited for the Maccabees since 11am. And when I say 11am, I mean before noon on a Saturday. These girls had planned out their week special every day to celebrate and anticipate the upcoming show. They made me feel like an apathetic slacker arriving at around 9pm. And when the Maccabees began to sing, it was sort of like if Elvis had come back from the dead. (and therefore on lots of utube videos)

While I wasn’t screaming and panting furiously, I certainly did enjoy the Maccabees set as I enjoy their album Colour It In. Not unlike fellow Brits Maximo Park and Bloc Party, they lead a set of songs that were certainly most of the time easy to dance to on the postmodern floor. And like Art Brut, Orlando Weeks is most of the time free to walk around with his mic whilst talking about first love and toothpaste kisses. However, he doesn’t exactly demonstrate that wry sense of humor/boyish insight and instead takes a more serious tone lyrically. He didn’t wander around as much as Eddie Argos, either, though that could be due to the room left on stage. Instead, he moved his mic back and forth and did a kind of robot dance..not quite like the hip shaking of Presley but at the very least it wasn’t a statuesque pose as Scotsman James Graham of The Twilight Sad is oft to do. Most captivating to watch by far was fellow guitarist and backup vocalist Felix White. In fact, he would have been a much more entertaining lead singer. His eyes bulged out and he had a great sense of rhythm to his movement as well as stage presence in general. He looks like he would be a great guy to just hang out with to talk about nothing and everything.

Listen to the Maccabees on myspace

View the complete photoset on flickr

setlist:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 13th, 2007 at 9:18 pm and is filed under music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.