Spit It Out

Album: Marks To Prove It (2015)
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Songfacts®:

  • This set the dynamic tone for the Marks To Prove It album. Guitarist Felix White told NME: "It's a really late epiphany to come to, but distorted guitars, when you just strum them they sound great. We always found it hard for that to work for us in a convincing way, so it was nice to find a way to make that work in a Maccabees way."
  • Felix White expanded on the way the song's sound provided the blueprint for Marks To Prove It. "It's got that different rhythm to anything we've done before," he told Digital Spy. "We were open enough to just have some chugging guitars - we never allowed ourselves that freedom to be that simple with the guitar playing. The piano, the female vocal, the really small breakdown, the big choruses. All those things became hallmarks of the record."
  • The lyrics were inspired by artist Susan Hillier's installation Monument - where she photographed and enlarged memorial plaques - at London's Tate Britain gallery. Vocalist Orlando Weeks told The Sun: "It was her discovery in a London park of a neglected Victorian monument. All these plaques were a celebration of people who had died trying to save a loved one or a stranger in a heroic."

    "It was such an extraordinary thing, in Postman's Park, near St. Paul's Cathedral. It's a shame we don't continue that tradition. There was one plaque for this 12-year-old boy who died. I was moved."
  • The video was directed by Joseph Connor and filmed in Elephant & Castle, south London. Connor said of the clip, which tackles the theme of gentrification: "The footpaths under the Elephant & Castle roundabout were adorned with the most stunning, colorful and odd mural paintings. Each day commuters passed these, enveloped by the artwork, they were something unique, something characterful, an important part of the community."

    "All this has now gone. The current regeneration of the area left no place for the footpaths and, as such, the murals were deemed surplus to requirement. What is replacing them will no doubt be more functional but will it be as fun, as unique, as characterful? I feel that this video is therefore ultimately about loss, a loss of character, a loss of distinctiveness. It's not necessarily condemning the future of the area but merely looking at what was there and recognizing its fantastic individuality something which is not as cherished in London anymore."

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