Sebright Arms, London
Tyneside's dynamic indie giants add an electronic twist to their latest songs, served up with their trademark wit and energy
It's normally the most crack-papering method of reinvention: a struggling indie band going electro on their fifth album. Yet few exponents of this most have done it with the dynamism, spirit and wit of Newcastle's Maxïmo Park. Ricocheting around a stage far too small for his famed star jumps at this launch party for Depeche Mode-flecked new album Too Much Information, singer Paul Smith – throwing am-dram poses and Freddie Mercury mic stand moves in his trademark trilby and suit – is part caged battle ferret and part postmodern northern club turn, dissecting his own "parody of being on a stage" like a Geordie-rock Stewart Lee. "The door is always open," he tells tonight's Maximo virgins, "but not my door, don't come to my house."
As the live-wire personification of the savage romantic poet lurking within the pigeon breast of every provincial indie nerd, Smith is energetic and endearing enough to carry off Maximo's tentative prods at electronica's fizzing force-field. And, expertly pinpointing their niche appeal, the new material eschews the state-of-the-nation tub-thumps of 2012 album The National Health to hone in on the intellectual winks and intricate detailing that have granted Maximo their semi-literary longevity – the references to feminist poet Audre Lorde in Her Name Was Audre or the maps on the bedside table suggesting escape in Leave This Island, their misted synth tribute to Black's Wonderful Life.
Reading on mobile? Watch Maximo Park's video for Leave This Island
Just as astutely, they serve up gloomy glitch delicacies like Brain Cells - a collaboration with the Invisible's Dave Okumu - as occasional side dishes to the hefty slabs of Futureheads-esque jolting rock that made their name. Limassol, Apply Some Pressure, Girls Who Play Guitars and Graffiti are all elbows and knuckles; tightly constructed new-wave melodies and sweeping emotive choruses best sung while being hoisted over the bow of the Spirit of the Tyne by Leonardo DiCaprio. Now the landfill is tarmacked over, bring on Maximo's New Build Indie.
by Mark Beaumont via Music: Electronic music | theguardian.com
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