Maximo Park – Quicken The Heart » The Music Mag

Maximo Park – Quicken The Heart

Pounding drums. sharp guitars. “Here’s a song that finally you can understand” An air raid siren wails in the background. And so starts the third album from Maximo Park, the sound of a band settling down comfortably into their sound. Their debut, “A Certain Trigger” bristled with heartbreak, smart lyrics and hooks straight from a classic 80s post-punk album while the follow-up, “Our Earthly Pleasures” broadened the sound, grasping a more complete festival sound and largely succeeding. On this, there isn’t as much musical progression, as musical contentment. Maximo Park sounds like a band who are willing to experiment within the boundaries of their current sound.

And that’s fair enough, aforementioned opener “Wraithlike” conjures up good feelings of their debut; angular guitars and frenzied delivery while wrapping it up in a fuller sound. “Questing, Not Coasting” evokes memories of the very best from “…Pleasures” as Paul Smith croons over wistful synths and sounds not unlike a Killers track. For a lot of the album, it all sounds more of the same.

But, the songwriting is improving all the time. “Tanned” begins with lush keyboard textures and quickly evolves into driving guitar chords and Smith’s desperate delivery reaching a stronger crescendo than ever before, slowly fading in flasetto over the very same keyboard that begun the track. It’s arguably their best song and shows a maturing of their music that was missing on “…Pleasures”

Lead single “The Kids Are Sick Again” starts off with Keith Moon-esque drumming and transforms into a stone-wall festival classic, waiting to happen; synths jump around the relentless bass, the distorted guitar angrily wails as Smith belts the refrain “The kids are sick again, nothing to look forward to” as the song reaches its conclusion. It’s all very inspiring and more evidence of this being a band improving all the time.

They’re not all hits though; “Calm” sounds like a song being played much too slowly for its own good. It’s a song begging out for jagged guitars and a frantic delivery but instead, it’s a sluggish would-be anthemic rock song. “The Penultimate Clinch” attempts to recall the heights of the debut but fails to recapture half the energy and “Let’s Get Clinical” fails to rise above its 80s influences, ham-fisting pieces of Wire and XTC and failing to find any cohesion.

Perhaps the highlight of the album is “Roller Disco Dreams”, a song that combines the very best of the two Maximo Park worlds. A paranoid bassline, rolling drums, anxious guitar lines and the utilisation of Smith’s considerable talents means the song rises above what’s around it and gives us a hopeful glimpse into the future of the band.

As a whole, “Quicken the Heart” is the fine-tuning of the songs that went into “Our Earthly Pleasures” to create an album fit for a festival stage. Its ideas aren’t a million miles away from their sophomore album but the little touches peppered around the album hint at one defining album still to come.