Maximo Park are one of the best bands in the world, in my humble opinion. You'd have a hard time arguing that, though, especially in America. Most people in the United States would have no clue who Maximo Park are. Then again, most people in the US that I talk to don't even know who the Smiths are. So fuck them, right? What could they possibly know?
Maximo Park are a 5 piece band from Newcastle, England that formed in 2003. Technically, they formed in 2000 but it wasn't until 2003 that frontman Paul Smith joined the band. Maximo without Paul Smith are like the Stones without Mick Jagger. The concept just doesn't work. Their first album, A Certain Trigger, arrived in 2005. They followed it with Our Earthly Pleasures in 2007. Following the one album every two years schedule faithfully, their third album Quicken the Heart is due out in just one week.
The musical landscape is fairly littered with jangly self-important UK indie bands. I enjoy The Enemy for example but there is something about their stiflingly self-conscious desire to speak for the masses of the Credit Crunch era in the way that Oasis and the Manic Street Preachers did the same for disillusioned 90s lads did that is off-putting. Also off-putting is the manufactured arrogance of bands like the Artic Monkeys. Maximo Park is refreshing because they are entirely different to the other bands on the scene. They are no less pretentious. In fact, they are probably more pretentious than most. However, their is a certain honesty in Paul Smith's pretensions that make it all acceptable. One gets the feeling he just does, to reference a song title, read "Russian Literature" all day and that he is the kind of fellow who can and does quote Byron at will.
It makes him the modern rock scene's nearest equivalent to Morrissey. With apologies to Liam Fray of the Courteeners, a self-styled "Morrissey with some strings" who opens for the man himself, Smith is the one who most nearly approximates the Mancunian crooner in terms of unique gesticulations and remarkably verbose lyrical sensibilities.
The Smiths, then, are an obvious influence but sonically there are traces of the Manics, Editors, and probably several other bands that I'm not thinking of right now. The important thing about Maximo is not that they sound different (they do, but not markedly so) from other bands but that they are different. While they work in a common sonic territory with other bands they stand out from the pack thanks to their unique lyrics and Smith's remarkably manic energy. The whole band seems to pulse with the energy that Smith puts into his performance.
A Certain Trigger was the debut, a guns-blazing, teen-angst ridden introduction of the band to the world. Our Earthly Pleasures saw Maximo refine the formula trying for clarity, depth of emotion, and sometimes sweetness where the previous album had supplied jangly guitars, superficiality, and self-righteous and self-conscious nervousness. Quicken the Heart promises to be the dreaded change of direction album. Smith said, "The whole affair is going to be quite stripped down compared to the last album because we don't like to repeat ourselves." That can only mean one of two things. Either it will be a brilliant redefinition of an underappreciated band or it will be their suicide.
The first single is "The Kids are Sick Again". As one can see from the title, Maximo is veering into dangerously political territory here. Besides the ocassional success like the Manics and "If You Tolerate This..." songs about sick youth are almost always bad news for rock bands. Thankfully, Smith saves us all from rants about government and the economy and instead sings vaguely about "pointless days pining" and his loss of self-respect before indulging in the hackneyed yet still somewhat powerful refrain of "The kids are sick again/nothing to look forward to/they jumped the cliff again/future sinks beneath the blue".
It doesn't pack the sheer energy of "Our Velocity" and in that sense it may be ill-suited to be a first single. However, it's a better than that lyrically vacant song from the last album and hearlds a yet tighter and yet cleaner style from Maximo. If the rest of the album can stay away from pseudo-political ditties and stick to the relationship heartbreak that has been the most fertile source of Maximo's songs, it could just be their best effort yet.
Here's the tracklist for Quicken The Heart:
- Wraithlike
- The Penultimate Clinch
- The Kids are Sick Again
- A Cloud of Mystery"
- Calm
- In Another World (You Would’ve Found Yourself By Now)
- Let’s Get Clinical
- Roller Disco Dreams
- Tanned
- Questing, Not Coasting
- Overland, West of Suez
- I Haven’t Seen Her in Ages
- Lost Property
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