The Maccabees - Colour It In

Lead singer Orlando Weeks has a wonderfully animated voice -- moving from pained and annoyed in "Tissue Shoulder" to smitten in the rolling "About Your Dress" to dramatic and emotional in the poppy "O.A.V.I.P." -- rich and just a little rough, which keeps the fact that the chords, the arrangements, and the rhythms of the album are all rather similar a show of strength, of realizing where your assets lie instead of signaling a lack of versatility. Weeks brings life and individuality to each of the songs, though, to be fair, his bandmates' bright arpeggios, sharp like broken glass, sixteenth-note, tom-filled drum lines and heavy bass don't make his job very hard. Colour It In bursts with vitality and youthfulness, with thick London accents and falling in love and breaking rules and simply enjoying one's self. So while the album may sound like it's been done before, it's just expressing the fact that all the things they're singing about, that all bands are singing about, really, have been done before, too. The Maccabees are in touch with the times they're living in, with the music and the energy around them, picking up on the trends they hear (i.e. the Futureheads, Dogs Die in Hot Cars) but only in a way that compliments their influences, making Colour It In an enjoyable, even if ephemeral, record.