★★★★★
When embarking on their sophomore album, The Maccabees made a bold decision and recruited producer Markus Dravs to help focus their musical identity into something fresh and contemporary. This appears to be a wise choice and one that is validated as the album unfolds. Dravs helped to create Arcade Fire's 'Neon Bible', of course, and has clearly left his mark, because The Maccabees musical evolution edges their sound a bit closer to that of the Canada-based baroque pop combo...
- www.thecmuwebsite.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Sound: This album is The Maccabees' first true opening into the world of indie music and with it they brought a very distinctive sound. The guitars are intricate in places but are often fairly basic yet this suites the style perfectly. The album is their representation of a teenage life, growing up with people coming and going and the slightly disjointed rhythms of the guitars reflect this (see 'Mary' or 'All In Your Rows')...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
Given To The Wild is the third album by inventive English five-piece band The Maccabees, who are enjoying the heady delights of receiving that rarest of treats: popular success mingled with critical caresses. This atmospheric thirteen-track opus stormed into the Number Four spot on the Official UK Album Chart upon its first week of release and has been praised heartedly by English music magazine the NME while the band appears to be popping up all across the Brit media landscape...
- www.beat.com.au
2012-03-07
★★★★★
Having first arrived on the scene as antsy Futureheads copyists, the Brighton, England-based Maccabees ditched the sharp angles, purchased a few Arcade Fire albums, and now enter 2012 as a panoramic stadium-ready act in the Coldplay mould. No, wait, hold on--before you run away screaming from the five-piece's latest LP Given to the Wild, please trust me when I say that the group is not as bland as such a comparison might lead you to believe...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-02-27
★★★★★
Ever since the bottom fell out of reedy-post-punk mid-last decade, fundamentally lightweight indie acts have taken to making grand statements. The efforts of say, Foals, to survive the scrappy-angular purge involved contriving profundity from self-consciously massive vistas. While you can't begrudge the desire of a band to grow, the leap from callow urchin rock to The Joshua Tree-with-art ticks involved stretching very little a very long way...
- thequietus.com
2012-02-02
★★★★★
Almost two years in the making, Given to the Wild, the third album from the Maccabees, ushers in a new direction for the Brighton, UK quintet. With "No Kind Words," from 2009's Wall of Arms, alluding to the changing nature of the group's sound, the musical maturation of the bright-eyed boys-next-door has manifested in an album emphasizing reverb, layers and atmosphere...
- exclaim.ca
2012-02-02
★★★★★
Release Date: January 9, 2012 (UK), January 24, 2012 (U.S.) Two years since the overlooked yet inviting Wall Of Arms, The Maccabees return with their third LP and it's one that is set to propel them to new heights in every conceivable way. The group has made no secret about the fact that this is the first time they have felt as if they are their own band with their own true sound, putting every ounce of drive and effort into this album and taking their time whilst doing so...
- absolutepunk.net
2012-01-16
★★★★★
Following up their 2009 release Wall of Arms, The Maccabee's, whose brand of indie has always been creatively left of the centre, return with their most atmospherically experimental record to date. Whist the avant garde-like vocals of lead singer Orlando Weeks are still as apparent as ever, it's the set-the-scene type production that makes you realise that they're moving in the right direction as far as maturity and collective growth goes...
- www.gigwise.com
2012-01-16
★★★★★
It comes as no surprise to me that after almost three year gap after releasing their second album Wall of Arms, that The Maccabees would come back with a more mature, confident and experimental sound with Given To The Wild. While listening to this album, its quite hard to believe that this is the same band who, on their debut album Colour It In that was released in 2007, were singing about the wave machine at the Latchmere Leisure Centre in London...
- www.musicvice.com
2012-01-12
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