Live Review: The Maccabees, The Creases

Brisbane indie-pop act The Creases did an admirable job of opening the night with their jangly, pleasant guitar tunes that were easily reminiscent of Britpop, the influence of which is pervasive both in their music and the headline act, making them all the more suited.

The Maccabees have a dedicated fanbase who had braved the wet weather to cheer them on, drinks aloft. The band had their own misfortune, with frontman Orlando Weeks having injured his hand, rendering him unable to play the guitar. His discomfort at having idle hands led to self-effacing jokes about having the lights turned down to obscure his body, but his pitch-perfect voice was brilliant enough as the band swept through new songs like Marks To Prove It and Something Like Happiness along with the expected classics of X-Ray and Precious Time. The admiration for the band was palpable, the audience moving with each of Weeks’ hand gestures, whether being urged into clapping along or simply swaying to and fro. When guitarist Hugo White took to the mic for Silence, he was met with over-enthused football-style chants of his name, that left the band grinning. 

This was an audience who knew all the words and wanted to sing along, especially evident on No Kind Words when the jagged bass gave way to the audience shouting, “If you’ve got no kind words to say, you should say nothing more at all” with gusto, before breaking into enthusiastic dance. The foot-stomping for an encore gave way for WW1 Portraits, a song that flourishes live, from a quiet build into a mammoth thrumming explosion. Closing with Pelican, The Maccabees proved to be one of the finest UK indie live acts you can have the pleasure of seeing currently.