The Maccabees live at All Points East: an ‘indie carnival’ for the ages
In a well-publicised dustbowl at Victoria Park, noughties stars and the next generation brought an emotional end of summer celebration
An “indie carnival” is how CMAT describes the festivities at All Points East on Sunday. Just after her main stage set, one that further cements her as the artist of 2025’s festival season, she jumps on stage and dances around maniacally with her favourite band, Bombay Bicycle Club, recalling memories of a carefree youth.
READ MORE: How The Maccabees reunited for the biggest show of their career
Most in attendance at the summer curtain closer felt similarly across the day. While ‘landfill indie’ has become a punchline in recent years, the bands across today’s line-up remain as vital and ingrained in the DNA of a certain type of British millennial as ever.
It wasn’t all about nostalgia though. Nestled amongst the line-up of noughties heroes were the shining stars of a new generation of UK indie. Divorce bring their country-tinged sounds to a rapturous crowd in the same tent that Black Country, New Road continue their fascinating evolution in later in the day. Westside Cowboy will by rights be remembered as indie legends in future decades too, alongside the rabble-rousing Man/Woman/Chainsaw, who both provide exciting examples of the future amongst the rose-tinted looks into the past.
While all excellent, it’s likely not the reason that most bought their ticket for the festival, though. Instead, they wanted to – and did – dive gleefully back into the scrappy world of The Cribs, who agelessly keep their rough-and-ready charm, and for a predictably massive singalong to ‘Hounds of Love’ with The Futureheads.
When The Maccabees broke up in 2017, they felt like a band that had done the near-impossible in calling it quits when at the peak of their powers, something many of their indie contemporaries failed to do. Another band who did similar were LCD Soundsystem, and the Londoners then followed the New Yorkers this year in realising that there was more still to accomplish.
Their glorious, heartwarming comeback set – followed by a summer of underplays that leaves them impeccably tight – traces this evolution. Early cuts ‘Latchmere’, ‘Lego’ and ‘X-Ray’ bring us back to 2007 and a band of earnest charm and fizzing energy. For later albums Given to the Wild and Marks to Prove It, they grew up gracefully and wrote sweeping songs about loving those around you. The momentum of the set only threatens to be curtailed when the sound cuts out completely at two points. It’s unfortunate in a set that otherwise bucks the trend of low volume at All Points East; the band sound big and loud until they briefly make no sound at all.
Even despite the well-publicised, suffocating dust that engulfed the festival across its two weekends (Jamie T’s lyric of seeing the “dust settle” in a surprise performance of ‘Sticks’n’Stones’ makes many chuckle beneath their bandanas and face masks), The Maccabees incite more than a few tears with these open-hearted, hopeful anthems.
Maybe their most beloved song is debut album cut ‘Toothpaste Kisses’, a hopelessly romantic slow jam that soundtracked many a playlist sent between teenage beaus in the late 00s. At its conclusion tonight, Orlando Weeks addresses the time that’s passed and tweaks its lyrics: “I’m no longer yours, you’re no longer mine / But this song never changed with time,” he sings to an emotional crowd for whom lots has also shifted. What’s celebrated today, though, are the things that have stayed the same.