Album Review: Maximo Park – Quicken The Heart
Rating: 6/10
It is now a good three years since the UK Indie scene exploded, fueled partially by the rise of unprecedented success of US Garage Rock bands such as The Strokes and The White Stripes and the scramble to fill to void left by the false prophecy of The Libertines (an interesting parallel to how so many Brit Pop groups a decade before scrambled to fill the void left by The Stone Roses in the early 1990’s).
Out of nowhere came legions of mop tops bands clad in skinny jeans and winkle picker boots, sporting 72’ Deluxe Telecasters with “The” in front of their group’s name. Soon a spectrum emerged amongst these groups: from standard Pop Punk given a British flavour (such as the rather vanilla Kaiser Chiefs) to the harder dance floor/ art school influenced sound (evident in groups such as Hot Chip, though admittedly the real hard stuff was left to the likes of Canada’s DFA 1979).
Maxïmo Park sat happily in the middle of this new musical milieu with tracks like their now legendary “Apply Some Pressure”- pop rock that the indie kids in their shameless pink cardigans and unnecessary Bob Dylanesque sunglasses could slide around the dance floor to.
However, that was 2005. Those indie kids have grown up, graduated, cut their hair or grown it longer, got jobs or got into harder drugs. Dance music with guitar is well and truly spoken for with regards to the bizarre Nu Rave stylings of groups such as The Klaxons and Hadouken!, the indie-pop offerings of Razorlight and The Kaiser Chiefs were left looking rather limp and directionless the moment The Artic Monkeys appeared with their tougher sound and superbly crafted lyrics, while the likes of Foals took the complexity of the Indie sound beyond three power chords. The turnover was brutally quick and the kings of indie from four years ago were left looking like the paupers of Pop in 2009. Franz Ferdinand read the writing on the wall and had a massive sonic overhaul, Bloc Party were last seen somewhere on the Antarctic Coast trying to concentrate on writing something interesting and few people these days care that Pete Doherty is in fact still alive and apparently releasing records. The question then is where do Maxïmo Park find themselves in 2009? Are they destined to go the way of the dodo or else be relegated to the grim future of gigs at university union bars and summer balls around the Home Counties and Midlands until they are finally forgotten? Their sound was spot on in 2005, but can they adapt and find their place in a changed musical landscape?
Well as far their latest release Quicken The Heart goes it is much of the same, that is much of the same Maxïmo Park and in all honesty that isn’t a bad thing. Their sound was always one that was original, it was neither a post punk carbon copy of The Clash or The Undertones nor a campy throw back to 80’s electro pop and of course there was a complete lack of “The” in their name. Lead singer Paul Smith’s New Castle accent continues to give a very English, tea and crumpets, twist on the sound while musically the songs show great contrast in terms of changing rhythms, drum breaks, choppy and stark guitar riffs, growling or otherwise atmospheric synth. Such dynamics made their earlier release intriguing and they have not lost their knack for adding some great textures to their songs.
The stand out tracks included the opener “Wraithlike”, an air raid siren at a bolting punk tempo, while the second track “The Penultimate Pinch” is in the vein of Joy Division’s “Dead Souls”, with trebly bass and bleedy guitar rattling around inside a decommissioned space craft in a low and dastardly manner. “A Cloud of Mystery” switches between moaning android synths and complex bleepy guitar riffs, a love song echoing out from a deserted deep space satellite, similar in ways to The Strokes “12:51” where guitar and synth tones become indistinguishable. “Let’s Get Clinical” has a haunting and spooky sound, akin to The Stranglers, a New Wave love fest of sorts.
The result is a brand of dance floor indie that extends beyond post punk, going to deeper depths of a sound similar to Joy Division with some little ideas that hark back to the insane genius of DEVO. The group have moved their sound along a little further with this these songs, yet the other tracks are much of the same and therefore it cannot be claimed that a complete progression has taken place.
Maxïmo Park already had a head start in that they were never just another face in the indie/NME crowd. Nevertheless, with the exception of a few tracks capturing peoples imagination on and off the dance floor with this record in 2009 is a challenge they won’t quite rise to. Quicken The Heart is not a dire disaster and nor is it absolutely irrelevant, quite the opposite, as they are still in their own little place. Yet the freshness and excitement that accompanied their songs every time they were played after midnight in some little club is gone, the magic that gave them such a head start has gone elsewhere. The indie kids have changed and the dust has settled.
MP3: Maximo Park – Wraithlike (buy)
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