The Maccabees’ Felix White On His US Tour New Music Discoveries – Guest Radar Column

Guest columnist Felix White tells us about the exciting unknown bands The Maccabees have encountered on the road in the States…

“Getting back into the habit of being on tour over the last few months has hindered a lot of pro-active new music searching. Quite often you find yourself retreating to familiar comforts of old albums trying to sleep on moving buses, or feeling too precious about your only selection in post-show snooze-you-lose improvised dressing rooms DJ sets. As you always do, we’ve still accidentally managed to bump into some though.

Going back to America for our first club tour in a while brought back the once commonplace lottery of local support acts at every show. It doesn’t always work. So we felt lucky that in Washington The Raised By Wolves got thrown our way. Not only are two of them brothers that look bizarrely similar to mid-teen-era Ray and David Davies, they just had something exciting and chaotic to them. I imagine they’ll really grow into something in a few years time, but I’d like to put our names down as some of the first that touted them because there was something very loveable about their show that evening. The fact we ended up having dinner unwittingly on the mezzanine of a particularly intense area of Washington in the middle of Gay Pride on a Friday night and they still remain as firm a memory, is a testament in itself.

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Friend of ours Emilie Richard-Froozan has just released a huge success of a debut feature length film, Buttercup Bill, which has a really lovingly picked soundtrack. It’s turned me onto a number of new things, most significant of which being Brightblack Morning Light. The song in the film is ‘Hologram Buffalo’, which is a sleazy, addictive thing full of modernised shamanic Dr John ‘Gris-Gris’ nods. I love it. The rest of the album sounds like it belongs in True Detective – Series One, not Series Two, which feels like a very important distinction to make on it’s behalf. Similarly, it pointed me towards Mitski and Ramona Lisa in the last week, which are both really worth listening to.

Finally, thanks to all that went and got ‘Marks To Prove It’ and made it our first Number One album. The fact that we started this band 13 years ago, have played almost every venue in the country, (including many of the aforementioned local supports ourselves) and ended up there is not lost on us, so thanks and love for sticking with us and we’ll be back out in England touring very soon.”

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