Orlando Weeks: ‘We had a difficult time making the last Maccabees album, but the reason for the split is our thing’

Sign up to Roisin O’Connor’s free weekly newsletter Now Hear This for the inside track on all things music Get our Now Hear This email for free Get our Now Hear This email for free SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. His old band The Maccabees split in 2017 at the height of their success, headlining Latitude Festival, selling out multiple nights at Alexandra Palace and hitting number one with their fourth album Marks to Prove It, but, Weeks says, there were no complaints of “but we’re next in line!” Having developed from frenetic outliers on the Noughties guitar scene into purveyors of expansive alt-rock elegance, The Maccabees were on the brink of stepping up to the major festival headline slots, taking their seat at rock’s top table. open image in gallery ‘The Gritterman’: a wintry children’s book inspired by Weeks’s grandad Bill “Once we knew we were expecting I found it very difficult not to write about it,” he says. ‘There is someone coming’ – having that as the final lyric on the record, and the first song on the record, ‘Milk Breath’, is the only song that’s about a world where he’s here with us, it feels like it’s the wrong way round.” Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 4 month free trial Sign up Enjoy unlimited access to 100 million ad-free songs and podcasts with Amazon Music Sign up now for a 4 month free trial Sign up Has fatherhood made him fear for the future? Actually, the combination of the amount of love that you feel helps get rid of some of that, and you suddenly become aware that there’s so much that can go wrong that if you start trying to think about it, you’re blinded by the numbers.” A singer who walked away from popular chart success to make oblique, boundary-pushing freeform mood music on his own terms… hang on, is Orlando Weeks the new Talk Talk?