Last Saturday night, me and my friends went to see The Maine, and I think they won happiest gig of the year. Just thinking about it brings a massive smile on my face, and what more could you want from live music, really?
Before I go any further about The Maine, I want to say a couple of words about both support acts, Guillotine and Wallflower. I don’t know how they ended up here, on that stage, but I’m glad they did. Guillotine have a Brand New vibe and the same ability to hit you so hard with their music, just with a note, just with a word - they ring true. They also have some wonderful songwriting going on. Wallflower are more energetic - they were a band I’d heard about for a while and I was extremely curious to discover them. I’m glad we made it out on time, they were as excellent as everyone made them out to be. They’re energetic and catchy, they grab my attention and never let it go. During Guillotine’s set, I was telling my friend how they appealed to “the Brightonian in me”. Both bands are set to play Washed Out Festival, in Brighton, in April, and that, my friends, is no coincidence.
And then, The Maine came on.
They’re one of these rare bands that are very, very up high on the list of my favourite bands and yet, they don’t have a particular story of their own. They haven’t made me a better human being and they haven’t been that connected to traumatic events that might have happened to me. They mostly are the band that I seem to always watch with my girl friends. We all have a drink and we all dance and sing the lyrics at each other. The Maine are that one time they played a packed Nouveau Casino in Paris and we were at the front, belting out Into Your Arms. They are that one time I saw them play with Mayday Parade and me and my friends sang Another Night on Mars at each other. They are the band I cannot bring myself to miss if they’re in town - I always have time for them.
Last Saturday night was no exception - they had all my time, my undivided attention, and I had a couple of my friends, a pint of cider and black as a slightly sad nod to English Girls, and that was more than enough for me.
In We’ll All Be, frontman John O’Callaghan sings “All we needed was some good friends and a song to sing along”. Quite true, that.
We didn’t just get one song, we got sixteen. Sixteen, covering most of the bases but still, largely representing the band’s latest record, the excellent American Candy. We got classics like My Heroine, English Girls (written about a “dirty, stinky place called Snobs”) or Right Girl. We got deeper cuts like the stunning Raining in Paris (which had Edith Piaf’s Je Ne Regrette Rien for an intro. If you heard people singing loudly in French, that was us) or The Way We Talk. We got new songs, tasters of the Americans’ future record Lovely, Little, Lonely. Boy, am I excited for that album.
There was an energy in that venue, in the Electric Ballroom, that was unreal. Opening with their newest song (Butterflies and Déjà Vu) is a risk The Maine weren’t afraid to take, and a risk that paid off, as the several hundred people facing them knew every word like it was a classic. From the first to the last song, everyone was singing along to every single word, jumping up and down and dancing like there was no tomorrow, sharing a moment with their friends. It was simply the most joyous, cheerful and happiest gig I have been to in a long while.
You know how, most of the time, I end up in tears at gigs?
I didn’t this time.
I left the venue with my jaw aching because I had smiled so much.
My favourite thing about The Maine is that they are. They just are. They’re never using any of the clichés a lot of other bands in this scene do. They just do whatever the fuck they want to do without showing off about it. When they release a new record, they never tell you “it’s their best album to date”, or that “they wanted to take risks”, or that “they wanted to explore new sounds”. They just do what pleases them, what feels right, and deliver it to the world with a humility and a sincerity that I wish every band possessed. They are unapologetic, confident and genuine, they just turn pieces of them into music and offer them to the world without an explanation. They don't conform to trends, they just are who they are, and if it means guitar player Jared Monaco turning up on stage in a dashing velvet suit, then so be it.
I wish every band was like The Maine.
Once again, The Maine were a collection of tiny moments assembled together in perfect harmony. They were the dad joke John made and no one in our group understood. They were a line of five French girls singing Another Night on Mars to each other like we’d all been friends for ten years. They were the guy being brought on stage for oldie and super mega goldie Girls Do What They Want, a nice throwback to the first times I saw them. They were the “fuck Donald Trump” that came out of nowhere. They were my accidental slut dropping and my terrible dance moves. Seeing The Maine live is a celebration of life at its finest, it’s a collection of the most wonderful things - my friends, a drink, excellent songs to sing along, laughs, honest rebellion and carefree fun. That’s what The Maine are, to me, and will always be.
As the lyrics to We All Roll Along go, “Eighty one twenty three means everything to me”. I think it does. I think, yeah.
The Maine mean everything to me.