Given to the Wild by The Maccabees

Given to the Wild, the Maccabees' third album, landed on Fiction and Polydor in January 2012, and it's the sound of a London indie band reaching for something wider and more mysterious. They built it over late 2010 and 2011, first at Rockfield Studios with Tim Goldsworthy and Bruno Ellingham, whose résumés ran to LCD Soundsystem and Massive Attack, then with producer Jag Jago in their own rehearsal room in Elephant and Castle, before finishing up at Decoy Studios in Suffolk with Cenzo Townshend and Sean Julliard.

Orlando Weeks sings and adds guitar and keyboards, Felix White and Hugo White weave the guitars (Felix on piano too), Rupert Jarvis holds down the bass and Sam Doyle drums, and the 13 songs drift, swell and shimmer like art rock with the brakes off. "Pelican", "Feel to Follow", "Went Away" and "Ayla" were the singles. It debuted at No. 4 in Britain, NME gave it 9 out of 10, and it made the 2012 Mercury Prize shortlist.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.