The Maccabees' guide to DIY

This band insist they are "not riotous boys at all", and yet their music seems to stoke the fires in their fans' underpants without them even trying - so much so, they now even have to act as peace-keepers at their gigs.

"If the crowd are going a bit mad, we'll stop mid-song," says bassist Rupert Jarvis who, when we meet, has just been fishing at Brighton Marina.

"There was a fight in the crowd when we were playing in Bristol, so we had to stop and get that sorted out and then carry on. It's very hard to know how to handle it."

The first time it happened was last November when the five-piece band, who moved to Brighton from Clapham, sparked a mini riot half-way through their gig at Brighton's Concorde 2. Only the people who were actually there that night know what really happened, but according to the band's fans - who littered their MySpace page with comments the day after the show - there were such heated confrontations between fans and bouncers that the police were later forced to take statements from both camps.

As one fan put it: "If the bruises on my ribs are anything to go by, that was an AWESOME gig last night!"

Subsequently barred (temporarily) from performing at the venue and every other local venue, the Maccabees are now booked to play two triumphant headlining dates at the Old Market in Hove. And with the Concorde 2 brouhaha well and truly behind them, the band are keen to set the record straight.

"The Concorde was a bit of a regret for me,"

says lead singer Orlando Weeks. "It was kind of unsettling, but it's been put to rest. It was just a situation that got out of hand. The bouncers got carried away, the audience got carried away, I got carried away. It was just crossed wires. I regret saying some of the things I said at the time, but I was shocked by how some people were being mistreated. But that's all we need to say about it. The whole thing's just got blown out of proportion.

"We could have made a huge story out of it but that's not what we are about. We just wanna play songs to people. We apologise if anyone got hurt."

Rupert remembers one fan swinging from the rafters. "The fans were going nuts," he says. "Bouncers got punched"

"It was a massive occasion for us," interjects Orlando. "We had been playing in this town for two years, and to play the Concorde was a goal of ours. It was an aspirational moment. It was a shame it ended like that and people got hurt and people were offended. I think the Concorde underestimated how raucous it was gonna get and were overwhelmed by it, in the same way we were."

Whether it's deliberate or not, the Maccabees' rousing pop songs seem to affect their fans in the same way the songs of the Libertines once did - engendering fierce loyalty and passionate affection.

It could be the band's gang mentality, which sees them perform a ritual game of paper, scissors, stone before every gig to decide which member steps on stage first, or the rapid-fire rhythms, catchy refrains and spiky guitar of singles like Latchmere and X-Ray. Or maybe it's Orlando's husky, yelping voice, telling touching tales of ordinary life.

"It's just songs, innit," says Orlando.

Whatever your preconceptions about the rock 'n'roll myth, according to the Maccabees it is not just about bad behaviour.

"None of us are like that," says Orlando. "I think rock 'n' roll has been misinterpreted. As Felix guitar/vocals always says, it's about doing what you wanna do. If you wanna be monogamous then f*** it, you're rock 'n' roll because you are doing what you wanna do, so that's it."

This independent streak is vital to the Maccabees' identity.

The reason Orlando came to Brighton in the first place in 2003 was to study art and illustration at Brighton University.

The band followed him down a year later.

Now all the band's artwork is his domain, from the record sleeves to the merchandising and the videos. "We wanna keep everything as inhouse as possible," says Orlando, "so it feels like it comes from the band. We want it to be a product of the Maccabees, whether it's a Tshirt or an album cover."

It's not unusual for the band to get their friends on board to collaborate too.

"We are in this position where we have got our foot in the door," says Orlando. "We can offer people we admire, and friends of ours, to get a foot in the door as well."

One video, for the single About Your Dress, is a fabulous creation born out of a mere £150 budget.

A quirky combination of finger puppetry and animation, the video brings to life a tenderhearted, messy story of young love in a night club, played out on fingers and thumbs. The first lines of the song, "I noticed you / You stuck out like a sore thumb / the most beautiful sore thumb I'd ever seen", shows a bandaged, bleeding thumb, twirling under a mirror ball.

Cut to two fingers, complete with little outfits, rolling down an astroturf hill, followed by a passionate tussle between four fingers under a duvet.

"I had a bit of time on my hands," says Orlando. "I had seen the Charlie Chaplin film where he does the little rolls on his forks like dancing feet. Me and a mate I had been at school with wanted an excuse to do something together. I had this idea for doing finger puppets cos it was cheap and quick - we thought it would just be something we could stick on YouTube. We went round the pound shops and bought dolls that had clothes, cut them up and stole their shoes. It was two days of really hard work but all it cost was my mate's train fare down from London.

"It was a bit of a gamble but it worked really well," he continues. "Now people send in their own version of it - and people are turning up to gigs with little hand things that they made themselves."

With influences from the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band to the Clash and Billy Bragg, the Maccabees' music is as much about where they are from as where they are at.

"I think there is a fine line between British and laddish," says Orlando. "I don't think we're about that - all beer and the cross of St George - but I do think there is something quintessentially English about our music."

All the songs are grounded in experiences particular to Orlando and the band.

"I like to write about things I know about - you're much less likely to come a cropper if you do that," he says. "It's good to face the facts of your life. So maybe you don't have prostitutes living down the road, or crack houses. I don't about that, but I know about Latchmere" the local leisure centre in Battersea, subject of the band's second single.

With their debut album, Colour It In, out next month on Fiction Records, the five boys who have been friends since childhood - Orlando, brothers Felix and Hugo White, Rupert and Robert Dylan Thomas - look set to continue on their spangly, DIY trajectory to the stars.

Awaiting the album's release, they are feeling twitchy but satisfied.

"It's a pretty big deal for us," says Rupert.

"I'm really scared about it but we're all happy with it."

"Felix says your first album should chart your progression in a way, and show where you started, where you end up and suggest where you might go. I think it does that," adds Orlando.

Recorded with three producers, including the legendary Stephen Street (The Smiths, Blur, Kaiser Chiefs) the album was intended to sound "like the best Maccabees show you could have been to".

"It's a very live sound," says Orlando. "We were quite particular about getting the right performance and having the right atmosphere." One of the tracks was even recorded in a converted swimming pool in Elephant and Castle.

Orlando's favourite song on the album is the final track, Toothpaste Kisses. Good Old Bill comes a close second. "They are slightly different to the rest of the album, like bookends,"

he says. "It shows where we wanna go, and another side of the band, moving away a bit from what we do live. It's not all fast drums, it's more waltzy."

• The Maccabees play at the Old Market in Hove on Wednesday 18 and Thursday 19 April. Starts 8pm, £9.50. Call 01273 736222.