With their fourth album set for release on July 31, indie-rock/pop Londoners The Maccabees have been expertly teasing fans with snippets of tracks to build anticipation. The album, Marks to Prove It will be the band’s first full length in three years and we’ve recently been hit with the track of the same name as a single after a delay of over a year.
Since their debut release Colour It In (2007), The Maccabees have earned themselves high praise as a band whose talent for crafting brilliant indie-rock has gone from strength to strength. A band of immense prowess both in the studio and on the stage, its not of impatience that fans have been hanging out for album number four for so long, but of pure anticipation.
Speaking to NME, the band discussed the album being overdue by a year and a half. However, it seems that this has been the price to pay for putting together a record that is what the band themselves consider to be their most self-assured, with vocalist Orlando Weeks explaining that he feels confident in the album, and certainly in singing songs from it. Guitarist Felix White later added that while the band had aimed for a 2014 release date, they didn’t feel it was quite good enough at that point in time. Now, Marks To Prove It is set to drop next month, following The Maccabees 2012 release Given to the Wild.
The new album is described by the sextet as being far more stripped back, with fewer layers, more piano and a lead single which also happens to be the title track. Marks To Prove It is, so far, the only full track to have been released. Rather than giving everything away in the form of singles, the band have been taking to Instagram in the lead up to the album drop to share previews of each of the album’s 11 tracks in a kind of ‘behind the scenes’ look at the recording process. So far we’ve heard Kamakura and Ribbon Road. While we can now add Spit It Out and Silence to the mix, the former is a short clip of the line “spit it out” being laid down, and Silence is actually just white noise (we see what you did there).
With a killer lead single, a confident band, a record 3 years in the making and a bunch of teaser clips only adding to anticipation, July 31 can’t come quick enough.
The Marks To Prove It tracklist is as follows:
1. Marks To Prove It
2. Kamakura
3. Ribbon Road
4. Spit It Out
5. Silence
6. River Song
7. Slow Sun
8. Something Like Happiness
9. WW1 Portraits
10. Pioneering Systems
11. Dawn Chorus