The Maccabees release their highly anticipated third studio album ‘Given To The Wild’ on Fiction Records this week and a promotion tour will see them in bristol next month.

The five piece from London - Orlando Weeks, Hugo White, Felix White, Rupert Jarvis and Sam Doyle – spent two years writing and recording the follow-up to 2009’s critically-lauded ‘Wall Of Arms’. Having previously written as a collective, ‘Given To The Wild’ saw the band explore a new approach to songwriting.

Avoiding the studio, each member retreated to their South London homes to develop ideas individually. Once these sketched ideas began to take form, the band took them into their new home – a shambolic rehearsal space and recording studio near them that they discovered had been previously christened ‘The Drugstore’ by its former owners Jesus and Mary Chain. From here the songs evolved into the thirteen tracks that would make up ‘Given To The Wild’, an epic and beguiling masterpiece of distorted pop, psychedelia and soulful guitar wig outs. It is the band’s most adventurous work to date.

Taking sonic inspiration from a disparate collection of musical peers such as The Stone Roses, Kate Bush, Talk Talk and David Bowie, ‘Given To The Wild’ finds the band exploring new territory. Television and Thin Lizzy-inspired guitar hooks pop out of washed-out soundscapes (‘Child’, ‘Feel to Follow’), where programmed loops and phrases are blended against the band backdrop (‘Ayla’, ‘Go’, ‘Grew Up At Midnight’), and where they write their most complete pop music yet (‘Pelican’, ‘Went Away’).

Tim Goldsworthy (LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture, DFA, Unkle) and Bruno Ellingham were brought in to record the first part of the record. The session was recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales. They spent a month there before enlisting friend and songwriter Jag Jago from Ghost of a Thousand to engineer the songs back in their own studio. Final touches were made including placing some guitars and programming from the first bedroom demos back in.

“We’ve grown up as people and changed as a band,” guitarist Felix White reflects. “We’ve learned for the first time what we really wanted The Maccabees to sound like on record. It’s taken us three albums but we finally achieved that. We’ve discovered what we’re truly capable of and that feels really exciting.”

The Maccabees were painted by revered artist Boo Ritson and then photographed for the sleeve of ‘Wall Of Arms’. Keen to continue their collaborations with British artists they chose the work of Andy Goldsworthy, a sculptor and photographer they have admired for some time, to grace the cover of ‘Given To The Wild’.

Following main stage slots at Reading and Leeds Festivals, and two sell-out shows at Brixton Academy in 2009 the band returned in October last year with an intimate run of shows to showcase their new material. In addition to their sold out tour in January the band have announced new dates in March: 4-Mar -Belfast Spring & Airbrake 7- Mar - Middlesbrough Town Hall 8-Mar - Nottingham Rock City 9-Mar - Brighton Brighton Dome 10-Mar - Leeds O2 Academy 12-Mar - Liverpool O2 Academy 1 13-Mar - Bristol Academy 19-Mar - Cambridge Corn Exchange 17-Mar - Cardiff University Great Hall 5-Mar- Edinburgh Edinburgh Picture House 10-Mar - Leeds O2 Academy 12-Mar - Liverpool Academy 7-Mar - Middlesborough Town Hall 14-Mar - Norwich UEA 8-Mar - Nottingham Rock City 16-Mar - Southampton Great Hall 18-Mar - Wolverhampton Civic Hall