Reply Some Pressure: Maxïmo Park

  As the frosty English winter draws an icy sheet over another fading year, Maxïmo Park find themselves in exactly the same position they were this time twelve months ago: on the road.  It’s a state of perpetual motion that has characterised their 2005; a year that has seen these four unlikely lads break from the chrysalis of a North-East music scene to fly to some of the further reaches of the planet to spread the Maxïmo message, leaving significant dents in the higher reaches of the UK charts in the process.  Tonight, however, we are in the less exotic, more familiar climes of northern England, where Maxïmo Park are set to receive their increasingly customary heroes’ welcome.   Greeting Gigwise warmly into their backstage bunker before tonight’s show, keyboardist Lukas, bassist Archis and guitarist Duncan are seemingly quite settled.  ‘We got here last night’, explains Lukas.  ‘The lad who sells us our t-shirts knows The Zutons so we were out with Boyan (moustachioed guitarist with The Zutons and scouse scenester extraordinaire) and we had a few bevvies’.  It’s a welcome breather for the boys on a circuitous tour that takes them from London to tonight’s venue, Liverpool’s Carling Academy, and then on to a hometown gig in Newcastle before travelling back down to London for an XFM gig on a bill that includes Hard-Fi and The Kaiser Chiefs.  ‘It is a little bit of a pain in the arse as we’d obviously like to hang around for a bit in Newcastle but we’ll be back on to the train in the morning – we’ll be straight out of there after our XFM show, there are no bands there we really want to see’.  An understandable complaint, really – after all, if you’d trekked from Liverpool to Newcastle to London in the space of three days, would you be hanging around to hear ‘I Predict A Riot’ for the millionth time this year?  Thought not.   At this point, the lazily-labelled ‘eccentric’ (for eccentric read intelligent) frontman Paul Smith enters the room with 12 naked virgins clawing at his pencil tie and thrift-shop chic suit, his trademark comb-over dishevelled by hours engaged in sexual battle… OK, it’s a slight exaggeration: he comes in accompanied by a lady-friend.  Dressed casually in a t-shirt and woolly hat, the figure cut by Paul is far removed from the dapper, Jarvis Cocker-meets-Interpol figure we see later on stage, but he relaxes straight into the interview with articulate ease.  So, after a hectic year, what does Paul believe Maxïmo Park have to gain from yet another set of UK dates?  ‘Well, this whole tour is an opportunity for us to assess where we are and to play some of the b-sides we like the most and all of our album, as we don’t often get that chance when playing shorter sets supporting bigger bands.  Realistically, this could be the only chance we get to play certain songs, as we’ll have moved on in the future’.  It’s a typical response from a man and a band who aren’t in the business of short-changing their fans; and the liberal sprinkling of b-sides and rarities in tonight’s set lend the night the feel of an intimate fan-club show: with tracks such as ‘A19’, the Warchild track ‘Waste Land’ and their suitably poignant adaptation of John Lennon’s ‘Isolation’ drawing a rabid response from the Liverpudlian masses.    The tour is also a good barometer of how far Maxïmo Park have come since self-financing their debut 7” in 2004.  Having enjoyed the patronage of friends and north-eastern peers The Futureheads early on in the career (a stick which is often and unfairly used to beat the then underlings), Maxïmo Park now find themselves carrying the same burden of responsibility for the burgeoning new wave of North East bands.  As Duncan explains, ‘The Futureheads asked us to go on tour with them, and we’d like to do the same kind of thing, as we’re doing sell-out shows.  We used to play shows in Newcastle with Kubichek! who have now supported us.  And The Maccabees rang us up for a support’.  On this tour are Field Music, a band with whom both Maxïmo Park and The Futureheads have strong links.  ‘When we were planning the tour we said that ideally we wanted Clor and Field Music as support’, Lukas continues.  ‘A good band is a good band.  We don’t want to play with bad bands – it’s depressing.  We don’t want our fans to have to sit through a bad band while waiting for us.     ‘We’re very happy with where we are up to now, we’ve been all over the world, and every day we feel like we’re getting somewhere – a year ago we all still had jobs!’.  Unless you’re a lottery winner or perhaps an Arctic Monkey, it’s probably difficult to appreciate how seismic a year Maxïmo Park have just experienced.  A string of Top 20 singles, a gold-selling album and countless tours and festival appearances have perched these unassuming fellas on the brink of genuine stardom.  For a band that were previously so reluctant to take any of this success for granted, their achievements so far must surely have fuelled their appetite for bigger things?  ‘We’ve raised the bar of expectation – our record company will look at this album and say ‘If we can sell 100,000 this time we can sell 100,000 next time’, Paul responds.  ‘But the reason that we’re in the position that we are is that our own standards are extremely high.   ‘We don’t just want to write songs that we like – we want to write songs that mean something to other people, and make every single song matter.  We don’t want to waste people’s time.  Those are our ambitions and expectations.  If you let the sales point-of-view affect your music then you’re moving away from what inspired you.  It’s a self-expression.  We want to move on with the second record, but you need to change because you’ve already done something; you need to move on artistically’.  Lukas expands: ‘We’re not in control of sales or how people react.  As long as we’re 100% confident in what we do… we want to play to play to as many people as possible as we feel we’ve got something to say, but we can’t influence how people react to it.’