How The Maccabees reunited for the biggest show of their career

Seven years after calling it a day, this beloved indie group have returned for a string of shows which include their biggest headline date ever. Here, Orlando Weeks, Felix White and Hugo White tell us about the long road back

- Nick Reilly

IF YOU FOUND yourself in east London’s Victoria Park earlier this summer for Outbreak Festival, there’s every chance you may have seen Maccabees frontman Orlando Weeks going incognito as thousands of fans watched Turnstile headline the capital’s biggest-ever celebration of hardcore music.

The two bands, it’s fair to say, are sonic poles apart. But that day provided Orlando with the chance to soak up a festival in Victoria Park, just two months before a newly reunited Maccabees head there over the August Bank Holiday to play their biggest-ever show at All Points East. The five-piece headlined Glastonbury’s Park Stage this year too (where they brought close friend Florence Welch onstage), but the point very much remains thus: all roads lead to Vicky Park.

“It just made me think, ‘This is gonna be great,” says Orlando, as we sit down at the south London rehearsal space the beloved indie outfit have used since they were teenagers, just days away from their first intimate comeback show in north London.

“You know that feeling when you're watching other people play football and you think, ‘God, I wanna do that’?” he explains of his Vicky Park reconnaissance trip. “I just felt really excited that we are going to be doing something similar.”

Then there’s the small matter of the note-perfect alchemy that occurs when you place a beloved band in a massive outdoor space underneath a late August sunset too, of course.

“It’s amazing when you're playing at that time of night,” Orlando reflects. “You stick loads of lights into that Silk Cut Purple sky, and everyone is just so ready for it. There’s an anticipation built into everyone who is waiting at those gigs, but really, they’re the hardest slots to get.”