Maxïmo Park - Too Much Information

Maxïmo Park
Too Much Information
2 February 2014
V2

3 stars out of 5

 

And the award for Worst Cover Art of 2014 goes to… probably this fucking thing. I completely loved Maxïmo Park’s 2005 debut A Certain Trigger, one of the better slabs of post-punk revivalism to come out of the UK explosion of such stuff during the middle part of the last decade. It was disarmingly sincere and fucking catchy. The Newcastle band has since undergone a revolving door of stylistic facelifts, but on their fifth LP, Too Much Information, they are still very much recognizable as those northern lads who brought us those many hummable, toe-tappable tunes of yesteryear (if one may call 2005 “yesteryear”).

The opening track, “Give, Get, Take,” was probably written as a collaboration between Squeeze and The Records over a lost weekend in the early ‘80s, after which the demo tapes were stolen by Maxïmo Park, who had rented a time machine for this specific purpose. Just because I don’t have the scientific proof doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. “Brain Cells” sees the band again firmly planted in 1982, but instead of the angular guitar-based post-punk of their debut, the track is more in a New Romantic vein, filled with echoes of Bronski Beat synth-y sombreness. “Leave This Island” is from an Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark LP, I’m certain of it! Okay, maybe not, but it easily could be. The fourth track, “Lydia, the Ink Will Never Dry” is a return to the band’s own past of guitars and melancholy minor key-ness, though here more Smiths than Buzzcocks. The remainder of the album is, for better or for worse, variations on the same themes, though the glam-ified power pop of “My Bloody Mind” makes it a good tune that is worth the listen, and perhaps provides the clue to Bryan Ferry being singer Paul Smith’s secret idol.

While Maxïmo Park have become more ambitious with their arrangements over the years, their songwriting still treads the safe waters close to the shores of their debut. “It’s not a peak, it’s a plateau,” sings Smith on “Leave This Island,” which seems appropriate to describe the band’s arc over the last decade. This plateau slopes subtly downward, however, perhaps angling toward yonder swamp of mediocrity, perhaps dropping into that distant sinkhole of has-beens. All geographic metaphors aside, Too Much Information is a likeable enough record, without too many peaks, but without any real valleys either. (Oh! See what I did there?)

reviewed by Richard Krueger