Maxïmo Mark can't recapture earlier magic

By Jordan Sargent

Published April 13, 2007

I'd like to start this review off with a bit of "Jeopardy!"

Answer: British post-punk band releases hellish debut singles, storms the cover of U.K. music magazine NME and the country's popular music charts. In a bout of market-saturation, said band is received on American shores with the same fervor as Geri Halliwell's post-Spice Girls career.

If you said, "Who are The Rakes?," you have some nice parting gifts backstage. If you answered, "Who are Mystery Jets?," we acknowledge your astute knowledge of the British music scene. If you went with, "Who are Kaiser Chiefs?," you've won a free one-year subscription to Spin magazine and a date with our lovely arts editor. If you responded with "Who is Maxïmo Park?," bask in the forthcoming applause.

That little exercise was intended to demonstrate the problem with Maxïmo Park's background. It was one of "those" bands that flooded the market in that short post-Franz Ferdinand, post-Futureheads era. It's better than both of those bands — by miles in some respects — but in order to discover the band, you had to be either extremely lucky, extremely shrewd or had to have the fortitude to wade through your Razorlights and Braverys (not British, but still).

The band's debut album, A Certain Trigger, is one of the most underappreciated rock albums of this short millennium.

It is one of the most whip-smart, surgically precise, hopelessly romantic and devastating albums released around its time. Frontman Paul Smith wrote circles around nearly every single bloke in contemporary rock so much so that 75 percent of Britain's bands should have been embarrassed after listening to just "Apply Some Pressure."

But enough with the romanticizing of that album (I could do it for days), we have much more pressing issues at hand, namely Maxïmio's follow-up, Our Earthly Pleasures. In short, it's exactly what you'd expect from Maxïmio Park, just not done as well as you'd expect. The unrelenting energy is there, the brilliant couplets are there and the precise playing is there. It all seems to be there.

What exactly is missing is unclear. My money is on the hooks, which don't come at such an unrelenting pace as they did on A Certain Trigger. It's also possible, probable even, that Maxïmo peaked with its first album, and this is just the natural comedown.

But there are still plenty of heart-racing moments. Single "Our Velocity," is one of the best songs the band has ever written. It is a lethal dose of ambush guitars, keyboard hooks and Smith's vocal tics. "Books From Boxes," a beautiful song dripping with resignation but delivered with force, is again vintage Maxïmo, and "Nosebleed" is a tactfully woven story.

The album falters as a whole because the songs in succession are too linear. There are no quirky, punchy rave-ups like "Now I'm All Over the Shop" or "The Night I Lost My Head," but rather there are songs with more traditional structure. Smith is a brilliant writer and singer, but he does too much of both. The rest of the band is nice, but its hooks were some of the sweetest on the last album.

On "Russian Literature," Smith wails a refrain of "Are you hopeful or just gullible?" and that's basically what I've been asking myself after many cursory listens of Our Earthly Pleasures. The problem is that I don't have a definite answer. There are brilliant moments here, but this album at times lags like A Certain Trigger never did. Consider this a wavering recommendation for the new album, but an undying one for the band.