A decade on from its original release, A Certain Trigger, the first album from Newcastle indie rockers Maximo Park, remains a curious thing.
A northern guitar band signed to electronic music mecca Warp, the band were weirder and more cerebral than say, Kasabian, yet still delivered a debut packed with post-punk tunes as whip smart as ‘Going Missing’ and ‘Apply Some Pressure’, delivered with energy by frontman Paul Smith.
Their records since have been less consistent; from the front-loaded Our Earthly Pleasures, to the eccentric Quicken The Heart, the excellent return-to-form The National Health to last year’s underwhelming Too Much Information, but their debut shines as one of the most potent relics from what is arguably the last era in which British guitar bands truly bestrode the earth.
So, with no new music to promote, what better time to dust it off and take it for a well-deserved road trip?
A gig that functions as nothing more than a nostalgia trip can be a dangerous thing though, so can Newcastle’s best band (sorry Dire Straits) rise to the challenge of Glasgow’s most legendary venue? Most definitely.
While peers like Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs have traded their chart hits for dabbling in marginalia and joyless pub-rock respectively, there’s no sense that Maximo Park are anywhere other than where they want to be and as Smith leaps and bounds across the stage there’s a good case to be made for Maximo Park as one of the mid 2000s scenes true gems; a band whose affability, tunesmanship and energy make them sure fire things for future cult status.
Smith’s eccentricities have always been Maximo Park’s unique selling point; the tight shirt and trilby; the howling delivery; the tales of romantic insecurities, never bereft of a cheeky phrasing or an unexpected delivery.
He’s never been the most traditionally overwhelming vocalist, but he attacks the Barras with abandon, leaping from side to side, voguing in the spotlight and delivering a performance that makes his band’s ten years on stage slip away.
To his right, Duncan Lloyd keeps the band snug with tightly wound riffs and punchy power chords that bring to mind the group’s heroes: Magazine, XTC, Wire; all groups whose own cult status is assured and whose muses never diminished.
After a brief greatest hits set that cherry picks the best bits from the intervening decade (Three hits and a miss from Our Earthly Pleasures, a pair from the uninspired Too Much Information, excellent versions of ‘Broken Hearted’ and the title track from The National Health as well as a rare airing for forgettable Warchild charity track, ‘Wasteland’), the quintet vanish into the darkness only to return for 13 tracks of indie-rock and power-pop that rank among the finest of the new millennia.
From the explosive intro to ‘Signal and Sign’ through to the sweetly romantic ‘Kiss You Better’ the band play with a tightness and finesse that leaves the audience spellbound, while the hits like ‘Apply Some Pressure’ get them dancing too.
So much about the record shouldn’t work: the spoken word ‘Acrobat’, the verbosity of ‘Graffiti’ but Maximo Park overcome all hurdles with their debut record and ten years on the songs show no sign of fading away.
Words: Max Sefton
Photos: Debbie McCuish
