Sunday 01/05/05 Maximo Park, The Blood Arm @ Jabez Clegg, Manchester

Ok, so the tunes are kinda mediocre and position them firmly in the greyest of grey areas somewhere between Strokes-ville and the Hot Hot Heat camp. Impressively, the girl in the band can actually play her own instrument rather than just standing there looking pretty which is the stance adopted by many a lady keyboardist; I think you will agree. In short, the live show is a spectacle not to be missed even if the tunes ain’t that clever. If I was in Maximo Park the fear of being upstaged would prevail at around about quarter past nine on every night of the present tour…

 

Not a band to be upstaged, however, Maximo Park seem unperturbed by their energetic support band as they position themselves before barking out fine pieces of angular rock and roll. Any regular Zane Lowe listener will already be acquitted with a majority of the tracks off the band’s impending debut 'A Certain Trigger'. Maximo Park race through as set made up of recent singles, b-sides and album tracks with 'Apply Some Pressure' being the second song in the set and sounding more ace live than you could ever imagine.

 

The venue is not the best place to see a band that you really want to listen to as the sound is a bit wank especially when the room is filled with so many beered up punters. And, if you want to avoid having your vision restricted by awkwardly placed speaker stands then being obscenely tall with a disjointable neck would help. Having said that, few could complain about the calibre of the entertainment provided tonight. On the basis of this show 'A Certain Trigger' will be flying off the shelves before you can say “Mon the Park”.

 

It’s too easy to utter those immortal words…poor-mans-Futureheads…and after awhile you realise that actually Maximo Park are a really exciting band to watch out for. New single 'Graffiti' inspires the most energetic jumping around of the evening and one encore later the band and crowd go their separate ways. Maximo Park inevitably heading for bigger venues with much less shit sound systems and the crowd, now avid fans, will be following close behind.