All Points East 2025: The Maccabees
All Points East has had a well-documented bumpy road this year, be it last-minute artist cancellations, dangerously dusty conditions or stage time confusions. Fortunately for both organisers and ticket-holders, the last hurdle and final day line-up is as reliable as it gets, culminating with The Maccabees headlining a momentous milestone of their own. It really is the summer of rock and reunions as the band, first formed over 20 years ago, tour together for the first time since an eight-year hiatus. They address that it is a big risk on paper, thanking the audience “for taking a chance on a band that hasn’t played for a very long time”. However, by the end of the night, fans old and new will undoubtedly agree this triumphant return was indeed as safe a bet as it gets.
It’s a dream billing for indie teenagers all grown up, the band members themselves included, with Everything Everything and Bombay Bicycle Club delighting fans from the same shared Maccabees era as if no time has passed. Many of Sunday’s collective of performers are also newer English rock bands, including Black Country, New Road and Dry Cleaning, as well as catapulting artists like CMAT, who puts on a screaming, sensational and energetic show ahead of her third album Euro-Country releasing later this week.
On the East Stage, there’s a dust-filled air of nostalgia as a montage plays and the London-formed headliners arrive on-stage for their homecoming moment. Rather impressively, the entire crowd instantly recognises the first notes of Latchmere and unanimously belts out every word from the top. This is how the rest of the evening will go, with guitarist Felix White asserting that the reason for their comeback is to “make tonight the best Maccabees show by a distance”. There’s no pressure to perform new material, the band instead relishing their favourites in a career-spanning set that jumps energetically between albums. There’s rockier anthems to literally jump to, such as X-Ray and William Powers, the latter becoming a stomping crowd-chanting highlight…all the while balanced out by softer moments in Love You Better and No Kind Words. There are no rusty guitar riffs, time-fillers nor stage gimmicks, simply effective fast camera cuts, which add to the energy, plus a lot of gratitude from the band themselves. Despite a limited speaker volume in Victoria Park and audio problems during First Love and Can You Give It, they seem unfazed, and the crowd become the support act of backing vocals themselves.
One of the definitive highlights is a surprise appearance from singer Jamie T, last seen collaborating with the band in their farewell gig of 2017. They perform a jubilant high-voltage Marks to Prove It together, followed by the artist’s hit Sticks ‘N’ Stones which is another exhilarating word-for-word crowdpleaser and reminder of how significant this era of indie rock music was to its fans, and how dynamic the artists still are.
Towards the end of the set, the lyrics become reflective metaphors of the evening: the joyful Something Like Happiness, into the encore of the ever-popular perfectly-whistled Toothpaste Kisses (lyrics poignantly changed to “this song never changed with time”) and finally a soaringly euphoric Pelican (“back to where we came from”). As they dust off the hiatus years and explain “we didn’t think we would be playing these songs again”, there will be 40,000 odd festival-goers hoping this is actually just the start of the comeback.
Bev Lung
Photos: Matthew Pull
For further information and future events, visit The Maccabees’s website here.
Watch the video for Marks To Prove It here:
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