The Maccabees, ‘Pelican’ – Song Review

There’s a certain inescapable feeling behind the new Maccabees’ new single ‘Pelican,’ from their ‘Given to the Wild’ album, that’s hard to shake — the feeling that you’ve heard this song somewhere before. Of course there’s a chance that you actually have heard this song before, as the album has been out since January. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We mean, of course, that we’ve heard someone else do a song that sounds very similar to it before the Maccabees did it.

That said, we can’t quite put our finger on just which tune we’re thinking about. While many artists usually take the likely more circumspect and thus easier to get away with route of co-opting another band’s general style, the Maccabees seem to aim for originality and end up sounding generically familiar. There’s several different genres that you can attach to the Maccabees — indie, alternative rock and Britpop the most prominent — and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Perhaps the Maccabees mostly just sound like themselves. ‘Wild’ is, after all, their third album, and ‘Pelican’ mostly gives off the vibe of a band that’s getting comfortable with where they are, where they came from and where they are going. Given that, it doesn’t really matter who or what coincidental comparisons you can make between them and other acts.

Listen to the Maccabees, ‘Pelican’

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