Living Colour

Far too many British bands slip through the net. The holes in said net must simply be too wide, or else the sheer volume of bands that our great nation churns out must be too much for the public to handle at once.

It can become a little tired to hear every five minutes that ‘this band are the next big thing’, and in this exciting time for British music, it happens more than it ever has. Sometimes it’s true - Coldplay hit the scene with Shiver and tore it to shreds, and I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor proved itself to be worthy of every ounce of hype which had been poured onto the Arctic Monkeys prior to its release. More often than not though, it’s not true, and as a result, we are mostly bored when we hear it. This is why bands like The Maccabees are forced to reissue albums, in an often vain attempt to get some recognition and sell some records. And in this case, it’s a shame we didn’t all listen first time around.

This is really a very good album indeed. It’s eccentric, thought provoking, diverse - it ticks almost all the boxes the fussy music fan might expect to be ticked. The relative success of latest single Toothpaste Kisses was the catalyst for the reissue, and said single deserved all the radio play it received - a wonderfully delicate slice of acoustic brilliance. It’s easily the album’s quietest moment though, with jaunty and modern indie being the real flavour of the record as a whole. Latchmere is utterly addictive, and Tissue Shoulders would not sit uncomfortably on a Strokes compilation.

The biggest (nay only) criticism of Colour It In is that the reissue includes no less than 6 unnecessary bonus tracks. All credit to them for making the reissue package more attractive to the fans who’d recognised them first time around, but in reality not one of the extra tunes would have made it to the album under any circumstances.

As an album though, treating the bonus tracks as just that, The Maccabees' debut should surely have garnered more attention than it did.