The Maccabees headline Edinburgh’s Hogmanay street celebrations

Band annnounce show will be their final gig in support of 'Given To The Wild'

The Maccabees rang in 2013 at Edinburgh’s annual Hogmanay street party last night with their final show in support of third album ‘Given To The Wild’.

Work now begins in earnest on its follow-up.

Orlando Weeks and his band took to the stage around 10:40pm on a bitterly cold New Year’s Eve in the Scottish capital following sets by Reverend & The Makers and local group The OK Social Club.

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Playing the smaller Waverley stage – the main stage, in nearby Princes Street Gardens, was being headlined by Simple Minds – the band opened their 15-song set with ‘Child’, with Weeks wishing the large crowd that had gathered to watch them a happy new year.

The setlist was split fairly evenly between The Maccabees’ three albums, with a handful of tracks from their 2007 debut ‘Colour It In’ – namely ‘X-Ray’ and ‘First Love’, which Weeks declared “was a love song to 2012” – proving particular highlights.

By chance, ‘Feel To Follow’ was accompanied by a brief, spectacular fireworks display, alerting the crowd that there was one hour left until midnight, while on ‘Love You Better’, Weeks took time out to dedicate the track to a friend of the band’s who had gotten married the day before.

Despite the near-freezing conditions, the crowd were jubilant throughout, with guitarist Felix White gamely urging them to “bounce up and down”.

With midnight approaching, the band ramped things up with ‘Toothpaste Kisses’, a charged rendition of ‘Pelican’ and closing track ‘Grew Up At Midnight’, which found Weeks rather modestly telling the crowd, “You’ve all got better things to do tonight. This is the end of us touring this record and we can’t think of a better way to see in the New Year than this,” before thanking the crowd, as well as the Maccabees’ crew, friends and management.

The Maccabees played:
‘Child’
‘William Powers’
‘Wall of Arms’
‘Young Lions’
‘Feel To Follow’
‘Go’
‘First Love’
‘Precious Time’
‘X-Ray’
‘Can You Give It’
‘No Kind Words’
‘Love You Better’
‘Toothpaste Kisses’
‘Pelican’
‘Grew Up At Midnight’

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