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Maxïmo Park, Arctic Monkeys and We Are Scientists - A Certain Trigger A thick North Eastern accent intones: "Well I've been waiting here for hours, it's getting cold, position closed". Could there be a more British opening to an album? Newcastle boys Maxïmo Park combine the brash punk pop melodies of the Buzzcocks, the art-deconstruction of Devo and the pulsating heart of a poet in singer Paul Smith. Opening song Signal and Sign urges us to make something of our lives, to "just get outside", shoving us out the door with an urgent punk intonation and the Ray Manzarek keyboards rhapsodising the possibilities of the big wide world.
Much like fellow Tyneside types The Futureheads (Maxïmo Park having been rather unsubtly coined 'The Futureheads It's ok to Fancy' by the NME), they subvert the verse-chorus-verse structure to their own wicked designs. Second single Apply Some Pressure layers up on at least three different choruses, with stop-start jerky heart attack beats, all wound up in a pulsating cry: "What happens when you lose everything?"
Current single Graffiti roars into action with Paul admonishing; "Well that;s enough, I can't take anymore". A tale of anti-romance and a Teenage Kicks for the Bloc Party generation, Paul propositions his potential Juliet: "I'll do graffiti if you sing to me In French. What are we doing here if romance isn't dead?" Graffiti recalls the original premise of the early eighties post-punk, that innate urge to change, subvert and restructure popular music. Maxïmo Park nail that idealism with this stormer of a single, and do it all with a knowing swagger and skinny-tied sparkle.
Uniting Dinosaur Jrs 'Feel the Pain' fuzzy guitar riffs with a rhythm section panting Lust for Life, Postcard of a Painting charges forward with more tales of sexual frustration and small town despair: "Picture me with you, but you couldn't do it, everything I said was true but I couldn't prove it". This isn't some cold attempt at emotional resonance a'la The Bravery or the Smithsonian gloom of Editors, Maxïmo Park embody the brutal truth of being knocked back outside Flares on a Saturday night and cursing all the way to the taxi rank with less than a fiver in your pocket. It's Paul Smith punching his fist against a brick wall of frustration and being repaid with frayed knuckles and a throbbing sense of injustice.
Sometimes everyone yearns for that moment when you cut all strings, and do a Reginald Perrin, disappearing into the sea forever. Going Missing charts this experience, vowing: "I'm going missing for a while I've got nothing left to lose, I don't listen to anything" and encases it in an indie-stomp of a Charlatans chorus. The uplifting and defiant tone is then dragged back down for I Want You to Stay, a melancholic synth lament, recording a relationship in ruins.
A highlight of the album, and half of their debut double A side single, The Coast is Always Changing, begins with a scurrying Smiths guitar and offers a pop ode to the sea, a lesson in art-punk poetry, designed to be dwelled upon as ''we look out upon the sea, the coast is always changing".
Why Did we Have to Meet on the Night I Lost my Head is a booze-addled regret familiar to us all, and is articulated here through chanted numbers, a crazy staccato frenzy of Buzzcocks guitars and visceral vocal attacks lasting a total of less than two minutes.
It appears that life is as depressing in Newcastle as it was in Sheffield. Acrobat revives the corpse of Jarvis Cocker's bedsit-bound Babies era social commentary. A dour and slow number punctuated by a mournful bontempi keyboard, the numb words are spoken matter of factly, dead toned and shark eyed: "We knew each other once, this can't be what you want, but you don't have to demolish me". With echoes of Arab Strap, this is the only track that doesn't appear to sit comfortably in the album as a whole, an experiment too far perhaps, or the poetry overtaking the songs?
Apply Some Pressure queries the eternal dilemma of a critic: "What's my view, well how am I supposed to know? Write a review, well how objective can I be?" The first point is indeed a problem with Maxïmo Park who attack contemporary culture, mixing art and politics with the subversion of good honest pop songs. It's like banging your head against a wall putting your finger on what these lads do, because they do it so well but continually skirt around the restraints of generic definitions.
In the end, Maxïmo Park puts a quieting finger to the babbling reviewer's mouth, draws a soothing hand across the forehead and insistently smothers them with a pillow, before quietly getting back to the business in hand: redefining pop music.
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