Inside The Maccabees’ reunion rehearsals: “It’s as if we hadn’t stopped”

Felix White leans into the mic and lets out a scream that, for 10 thrilling seconds, reverberates around the room. Around him, his Maccabees bandmates build the tumbling, spiky layers of ‘Marks To Prove It’, recreating the urgent magic that’s seen the title track of their 2015 album light up stages around the world. After the song reaches its end and the five musicians set down their instruments, White turns around, eyes wide: “I nearly blacked out during that scream!”

This is not a scene from years gone by before the South London band split in 2017, but one unfolding now, on a chilly Friday evening in January 2025. We’re in a small practice room in New Cross – the same building the group practised in as teenagers – at the end of The Maccabees’ first week of rehearsals since announcing their unexpected reunion in October 2024. Spirits are high as the band chat and joke around before they get down to the songs, no sign of tension or lingering awkwardness as they play together after nearly eight years apart.

“What’s your favourite Maccabees song?” White asks shortly after NME arrives, ushering us over to an amp with two pieces of A4 paper covered in song titles – the tracks they’ve already honed to a respectable standard – sat on top of it. The guitarist prompts us to make requests from the list for the final run-through of the week. When the chosen trio – ‘Love You Better’, ‘Lego’ and ‘X-Ray’ – are over, he looks around the room, hesitating to take off his guitar.

“Should we do one more?” he asks, suggesting ‘Marks…’ or ‘Pelican’ to wrap up the informal performance. “Oh, the fastest ones!?” quips drummer Sam Doyle, but there are no protests to carrying on. They might be tired from five days of relearning and remembering their back catalogue, but it’s clear The Maccabees are relishing playing together again.

The Maccabees CREDIT Shireen Bahmanizad

If it looks from the outside as if the band have picked up where they left off, then it feels the same to them, too. “It’s felt to me like no time has passed,” White says after everyone’s packed up their gear and gathered in a haphazard circle in the corner of the room. “It’s so strange. In the chunk [of time] from the last show, you could conceive of The Maccabees as a different existence, but as soon as we started playing, it was as if we hadn’t stopped.”

During that first existence together, the band amassed a huge following as they masterfully evolved from the youthfully exuberant indie of debut album ‘Colour It In’ to the more cinematic and artful soundscapes of third record ‘Given To The Wild’ and its successor, ‘Marks To Prove It’. That final release took them to what seemed like the brink of the big time, earning them their first Number One album and a place at the top of the bill at 2016’s Latitude Festival. But weeks after that triumphant headline performance, they announced they had made the “incredibly difficult” decision to “call it a day”. A UK tour the following summer capped things off with some of their biggest – and most emotional – headline gigs ever where, to paraphrase ‘Lego’, there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.

Since those then-final shows, the band have all followed separate, and often multiple, paths. Some have taken them to new musical projects – frontman Orlando Weeks’ three gorgeous solo albums, guitarist Hugo White and brother Felix’s skyscraping band 86TVs – or behind-the-scenes – Hugo’s production work with the likes of Jamie T and Jessie Ware, Doyle shifting focus to make short films and music videos. Others have diverted them out of the music world entirely, like Felix’s entry into sports journalism and bassist Rupert Jarvis’ new career in carpentry.

The split – a result of years spent putting everything they had into the band finally reaching a tipping point of exhaustion – felt so absolute that it seemed inconceivable to the band and fans alike that The Maccabees would ever play together again. “We didn’t have in the back of our minds, ‘This is all good; we’re just saying it’s ending, but we’re gonna get back together’. It was like, ‘We’re not ever going to do this again’,” explains Hugo. Even when the guitarist rallied the band back together to play one song, ‘Pelican’, at his wedding reception in 2020, they still didn’t consider a large-scale reunion.

“The Maccabees is just this huge part of who we all are” – Felix White

It wasn’t until Christmas 2023 when the five friends met up for a festive tipple at Brixton’s Effra Social, that they began to discuss the idea. Still, comeback plans were “pretty vague” until they got the offer to headline All Points East this August. “There were other ideas, but that was the easiest one to start imagining and see us in that occasion,” Weeks explains. “It crystallised everything for me.”

“At the time, everyone had other commitments and plans, so we were actually thinking if we did do anything, it would happen much further in the future,” adds Doyle.

But here The Maccabees are, preparing for a mammoth return in London’s Victoria Park in seven months’ time. As well as topping the bill on August 24, they’re also curating the line-up, stacking it with old and new talent. Among the announced acts so far are The Cribs, Bombay Bicycle Club, Dry Cleaning, Nilüfer Yanya, The Murder Capital, Divorce and Prima Queen. “The list, when we put it together, was just a wish list, so it’s a nice thing to keep getting emails [saying], ‘They’re available’ or ‘They’ll be there’,” smiles Weeks.

Many of the artists on the bill have strong connections to the band, be they personal ties or acts that excite them. “Nick [Buxton] and Lewis [Maynard] from Dry Cleaning used to be in a band called Le Shark, and they used to support us all the time,” says Felix. “We thought they were gonna be one of the biggest bands in England, but for whatever reason, it didn’t work. So to have them involved is important to us.” He casts through the line-up in his mind. “We loved The Cribs when we were young and having them was important because it speaks to a band we were in awe of and have continued to do their own thing.”

The Maccabees CREDIT Shireen Bahmanizad

As for The Maccabees’ own set, the setlist is far from decided, but right now, they’re finding a sense of liberation in a show not tied to a release that needs promoting or an anniversary celebration. “You’re always touring a record, so you’re always trying to put new music in the set, whereas now it’s like, we’ve got these records, and we can pick and choose what we feel comfortable with,” Jarvis notes. “There’s no pressure to play the new album or play certain songs.”

New music is not under discussion right now, with the band taking things one step at a time, both in terms of recording and further gigs. “The plan is to do [All Points East] and see how much we love it,” Felix explains as his bandmates nod in agreement. There’s a moment’s silence before a grinning Doyle chimes in: “We might hate each other by August.”

Listening to them speak about their experience of being back together, that seems unlikely. “Everything we built together as people is very connected to being in a band,” Weeks says. “We’ve been able to achieve relationships outside of that, but there’s a totally other level of comfort in each other’s company when this is the reason we’re hanging out. The particularness of this type of companionship that doesn’t exist outside of this…” He pauses as he gestures around the circle. “It feels rarefied.”

“It’s just this huge part of who we all are,” agrees Felix. “To be back inside it is just a nice feeling.” When the band take to the stage in August, you suspect that, once again, there won’t be a dry eye in the house – but, this time, in a much happier way.

The Maccabees headline All Points East on August 24.

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