Maxïmo Park could have easily disappeared into the slew of angular, affected guitar bands that emerged in the UK last year, but two factors helped them stay on the muso radar. One was them being the first non-electronica signing to the unspeakably hip Warp label. The second was their enigmatic frontman Paul Smith with his candid/overwrought lyrics – whichever side of the fence you sit on – and labour intensive stage workout. While the first element has since been relegated to a mere industry curio, the relentless, perpetual motion of Smith is bound to cultivate the sort of veneration reserved for his more celebrated peers.
That’s not to belittle the rest of the band, whose cannily crafted hooks and furious instrumentation create wiry, melodic post-punk, but their collective energies and drive seem to be channelled through Smith’s high-wire rock posturing. He bounds around the stage like a marionette in a whirlwind, throwing shapes and scowls and wide-eyed stares at the audience. His lovelorn lyrics dictate a tale of a man scorned, and he treats the audience as the object of this unrequited, desirous passion. When not scorning them with pointed fingers, he’s pleading with begging arms or coquettishly offering sexual advances with clumsy hip-swivels. Keyboardist Lukas Wooller occasionally deflects some of the attention away from Smith with his own syncopated convulsions and karate chops, but it’s no use. There’s only one rock star demagogue on show tonight.
Smith’s contortions and facial tics help give the music a frenetic gee-up. The first half of the show is breathless. The band race through ‘Signal And Sign’, ‘The Coast Is Always Changing’ and ‘Graffiti’. The Heineken Green Room crowd is the usual ragbag of lickspittle fanboys/girls and benign freeloaders, but the spiky rhythms and frenzied synths coerce everyone into nodding approvingly. Perhaps after the hectic opening it’s the pause for breath allowed by the softer new single ‘I Want You To Stay’ that helps make it one of the nights highlights.
It’s a brief respite. The rousing ‘Limassol’ provides one more opportunity for flailing limbs to collide with verbose lyricism as does ‘Now I’m All Over the Shop’ with it’s very modern tale of romance in the gutter. It still doesn’t prepare you for the prolonged bout of applause that greeted ‘Apply Some Pressure’, which made even Smyth look bashful.
The audience’s clamour for an encore is rewarded with newbie ‘Nosebleed’ and the relative serenity of ‘Going Missing’. The band departs to more sustained applause, with Smith’s face a shape shifting collage of bowled over grimaces and ear to ear grins. If he’s not sure what to make of it all, then at least the crowd most certainly are.