VIDEO: Maxïmo Park, "Our Velocity"
“In the gaps between words are the things that really intrigue me,” sings Maxïmo Park frontman Paul Smith on “Girls Who Play Guitars.” For most of the song, Smith has been lamenting gone-wrong love over polished punk rock that’s typical of the Newcastle band’s new album, Our Earthly Pleasures (Warp), so this semi-cheesy, semi-artsy line jumps out. It reads almost like a statement of purpose, as if to say, “Yes: Maxïmo Park are an in-the-gaps band.” Even in “Girls,” the way Smith transits from “we” to “me and you” to just another “she” is subtle, felt more than heard, the details never oversold.
Then again, there’s not much to get with Maxïmo Park (who come to Great Scott July 11). They play tight, fast, radio-friendly rock songs with guitars that sound like other tight, fast, radio-friendly rock songs with guitars. They do have a few songs that mention books, and one called “Russian Literature,” but it’s not as if the lyrics were stuffed with Decemberist-type malapropisms. Back in 2005, many wrote the band off as new-post-punk johnny-come-latelies following the success of Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party and the Rakes and the Futureheads, whose herky-jerky tempo breaks were kissing cousins to Maxïmo’s. Which was tough to argue with, especially since Maxïmo shared producer Paul Epworth with many of those bands. Epworth gives scrappy indie acts gloss, sanding off enough rough edges to get them serious radio play and mainstream success. That happened to Maxïmo in the form of 2005’s “Apply Some Pressure”; the song even landed on a few video-game soundtracks. The band’s A Certain Trigger debut went UK platinum, their latest single, “Our Velocity,” peaked at #9 on BBC radio, and Our Earthly Pleasures debuted in April at #2 on the UK album charts. So these guys don’t need me to go to bat for them.
Or do they? It’s as if all the new UK guitar bands were competing to occupy the same “new UK guitar band” niche. Which is a problem when you’re Maxïmo Park, who — unlike many of their clownish contemporaries — do have a lot of charm in the gaps, in the details. Anybody can pick out the Devo-like synths that open “Our Velocity,” or the Johnny Marr–like guitar arpeggios up and down “Books from Boxes,” or the anxious Billy Joel piano stabs in “Russian Literature,” or the sappy Bill Joel piano twinkles in “Your Urge,” or the influence of XTC’s Drums & Wires throughout. But why is there so little talk about how producer Gil Norton has made the guitar sounds on “Girls” brash and monstrous with no compromise to their agility — and how puny the bands that Epworth produces sound by comparison? Why no mention of how, in “Books from Boxes,” Smith puts Morrissey’s crippling self-consciousness about relationships through further reflexive anxieties, becoming self-conscious about that very self-consciousness — and how this manifests itself as self-sabotage and utter passivity: “You have to leave. I appreciate that.”
Which isn’t to say that Our Earthly Pleasures is begging for a close read. And I’ve certainly passed on guitar bands because they sounded like a lot of other guitar bands. To an extent it’s an Internet problem: with so much new music available every day, few of us have time to listen to a track more than once. If bands want to stand out, they need to stand out in obvious ways. I like Smith’s epigram: “I buy books I never read/Then I tell you some more about me!”
MAXÏMO PARK | Great Scott, 1222 Comm Ave, Boston | July 11 | 617.734.4502