Maximo Park: Live

2007-04-26 01:26:56

Before we begin to devour the plat du jour, a special mention must go out to Art Brut, who kept the audience highly amused by introducing us to their seemingly endless obsession with Top of the Pops.
    
Frontman Eddie Argos also posed the vital question: Why don’t our parents care enough about us? But any philosphical debate that may have been sparked in the pit was lost as he went off on another tangent by instructing everybody in the venue to stop thinking about their exes. That’s good advice.
    
Bounding onto the stage like the reckless punk revivalists they are, Maximo Park opened with the throbbing, densely layered Graffiti from A Certain Trigger and then move on flawlessly with the spiky Girls Who Play Guitars from their new album Our Earthly Pleasures. This effortlessness is pretty amazing and is indicative of the entire set. Most bands seem to have a hard time getting the crowd to be enthused with new material, but Maximo Park have no such problem.
    
The third song was the recent hit single Our Velocity; a full-scale assault on the senses that marks the return of the ‘Park and acts as a two-fingered salute to any doubters who thought they would disappear after the dizzying success of their debut album.
    
The crowd absolutely adore them. Except for one moment when frontman Paul Smith makes the terrible mistake of mentioning their instore gig earlier in the day at Reveal Records in Derby. Oh dear. This mention of our erstwhile neighbours was roundly met with a chorus of boos.
    
Above anything though, Maximo Park are professionals. They continue playing with a rampant, incessant, unrestrained energy that would be hard for any other current live act to match up to. Frontman Paul Smith threw psychotic stares at the crowd, leapt off amps and insisted on ferociously shaking the hands of every crowd surfer he saw. Meanwhile, keyboardist Lukas Wooller was desperately wringing his hands in an effort to make blood flow around his body after hammering away with a possessed intensity.
    
After a storming rendition of the instant-hit (just add water, or a crowd surfer if there’s one handy) Apply Some Pressure, the crowd responded by showering the band with a loud round of applause that lasted for three whole minutes. I’d not witnessed anything quite like it in a long time, and neither had they by the rapturous looks upon their faces. Things were brought back down to earth again by the crowd chants of ‘Max-i-mo!’ and Paul Smith said: “We’ve played other venues in Nottingham before, but this is definitely our best gig here ever. Rock City: we salute you!"
    
They tried to end the set with the phenomenal Going Missing, which brought a seemingly never-ending sea of crowd surfers into the clutches of Rock City’s beefy security guards. But this wasn’t enough to satiate our appetites. The crowd demanded a three-song encore, which threw even more chaos into the mix with new song The Unshockable; a riff-heavy thumping tune that left us all feeling rather satisfied with ourselves. At least, for tonight, we know were much, much better than Derby…
    
Review: Michelle Dhillon
    

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