Orlando Weeks is a man who appreciates an impressive package.

When it comes to music buying The Maccabees front man is really quite old fashioned. Having never downloaded a song (“I wouldn’t know how.”), album packaging and artwork is something that means more to the South London based singer than your average iTunes generation squirt.

“We’ve managed to get a great artist to do a portrait of us for the cover,” says Weeks of the new album, due for release in May. “We got back off tour and have been trying to finalise the artwork for the album for while, get it ready for print and all that nitty-gritty.

“We really believe that you have to make it really special so that when people open it they feel like it’s worth buying the physical copy as opposed to just a download.

“I just think that with artwork if you have gone to all this trouble to make the music, you sort of fall short if you don’t put the effort into making the artwork good and making it worth buying the CD.”

Come on though. Do you really expect us to believe you’ve never once been on Limewire? “I really don’t download anything. I like having a physical thing. I mean I’m sure that one day when I can’t afford school books for my children because I’ve got a Yellow Storage thing full of CDs that’s costing me an arm and a leg, I’ll change my mind. But for the moment I actually enjoy having a real thing and look forward to opening it up and everything that goes with that.”
After the success of their 2007 debut, Colour It In, it won’t just be the artwork that Maccabees fans are looking forward to with the release of the band’s follow-up, Wall Of Arms, on 4 May.

First single from the album, ‘Love You Better’ (released on 27 April), is typically Maccabees. Another low-fi, tender, love song, Weeks wears his bleeding heart on his sleeve with all the quiet intensity of earlier hits like ‘Toothpaste Kisses’ from the first album. The single has a darker edge to it than pervious Maccabees releases though, and it’s something which backs up the promises of a less breezy sound that the band have told us to expect from the second record.
And unsurprisingly, we’re also pledged a more ‘mature’ effort the second time around, though the subject matter is still very much in the ‘up close and personal’ mould that has characterised Weeks as a song-writer since the band formed in 2004.

“I’d hope it’s more grown up,” he says. “I mean we’ve all grown up a bit I think, so I suppose that would be reflected. Lyrically, it’s still the same things that I feel I can justify talking about. You know, family and friends and loved ones.

“It’s pretty much always from personal experience or from one degree of separation. I wish I could write from a more fantasy-based perspective. I wish I the ability to make something up and still make it sound good, but I can’t. Maybe one day. Maybe one day.”

And The Maccabees sound... How much has it moved on from the first album? “As far as I’m concerned it’s just better,” I’m told. “It sounds less naïve. We’ve kind of kept the same spirit, but I think this one sounds maybe more delicate. I hope that people can see an improvement on it because I can definitely see one. We have definitely tried to push ourselves. The recording and the production on it are just a bit more grand too I suppose.”

Production duties on Wall Of Arms fell to Bjork, Arcade Fire and Coldplay collaborator, Markus Dravs, who oversaw the recording over a period of three months between studios in Liverpool, Reading and Paris.

Weeks describes Dravs as a mediator, who was able to find a middle ground between what the five members of the band wanted the record to sound like.

“He was just very good at finding that sound that satisfied what we all thought we wanted, you know. We are five pretty opinionated people – we all listen to very different stuff - and he was able to just step back and find that happy medium, and in the end we had something that didn’t sound like any of us individually but sounded like The Maccabees, which is how it should sound I guess.

“He sorted us out actually. He was fab. Honestly, he is the nicest man and also just a very, very clever record producer. He really has a great ear and the kind of insight that I don’t know how you get. It was very intense at times so it was really good to have him around.”

“It may sound simple, but I guess at the end of the day the producer’s role is to produce, you know, to make the thing happen. And that’s just what he did.”

Originally from South London, The Maccabees spent time living in Brighton, and were labelled a Brighton band the first time they came around. There was something about their sound on the first album that separated them from the hoards of London bands around at the time. There was a purity to the music and to the song-writing. They sounded somehow cleaner, less cynical; and talked about love and relationships rather than taking drugs in Hoxton. There’s a part of you that would like to believe this had something to do with the sea air, but judging by Orlando Weeks’ reaction, that might be ever so slightly romantic…

“We’ve all moved back to London now,” he laughs, “apart from one of us who’s still there, living on a balcony. We had finished university and Brighton is a fairly small town to be honest. I mean it’s got a lot going for it but I think I just associate it with a certain period now, you know.

“It’s probably a really good place to bring up kids though. It’s safe, and pretty and green. I desperately wanted to get back to the smog. I wanted the cancer.” That’s more like it…