Album Review

The Maccabees – Can You Give It

• 13th Jul 2009

No relation to the Mock Turtles Can You Dig It, the new Maccabees single is an inoffensive chunk of indie rock-lite that’s destined straight for a prime spot in Edith Bowman’s CD collection.

Taken from the Brighton band’s second album Wall Of Arms, Can You Give It forgoes the spark of previous singles for two minutes of the sort of recession-friendly epic gloom made ubiquitous by indie cry-babies White Lies.

Would it hurt The Maccabees to be a bit more specific? Can we give WHAT? Money to charity? Genital warts to our friends? You won’t find answers in the lyrics, which are all about poetic things like shadow floors and rolling boulders. You know, things that sound nice but don’t actually mean very much. Oh, and for the record, repeating “can you give it” five times in a row does not a chorus make.

Epic-ish, catchy-ish, it’s all a bit, well, ish – apart from a rollicking military section at 01:31 minutes in, which we liked. A lot. Sadly the review copy didn’t come with the much-hyped Dodworth Colliery Brass Band rendition on the B-side – and it wouldn’t have hurt to have them on the A-side as well.