Maximo Park

Yet another band with only one record take to the historic stage of Isle of Wight, actually the more new bands do this the less the history means anything. Anyway, they’ve had songs that have been on the radio a lot so loads of people turn up while the stage is being made ready to listen to these lads from Newcastle. In fact the audience trebles in less than half an hour.

Even those who have been on their backs in the sun since lunchtime suddenly stand up and clear away the blankets for Maximo Park. These guys must surely be something to behold! Flags bearing their name are waving in the heat haze and as the backing music drops a large backdrop emblazoned with Maximo Park is unfurled and the crowd cheer deliriously! This lot must be awesome!

‘Grafitti’ opens the show and it’s a good karaoke number as singer Paul Smith leads us all while leaping about in trilby, jacket, white shirt and white trousers. There’s been a large podium attached to the stage and he leaps out onto it doing his best impressions of the album cover – no idea why, guess it’s cos he can (sorry if he has some form of physical tourettes).

He tells us, we who have been in the baking heat for the last six hours that it’s too hot for a jacket and asks “Are we boiling?” Are we ever? Now he’s dressed in hat and white acrobat outfit and it seems the band are struggling to hold their chord shapes for ‘The Coast is Always Changing’ but it doesn’t matter that they aren’t particularly musical, it’s punk-art and flavour of the month and fortunately the lyrics have no complexity making it easy for even a crowd of monkeys to sing it back to the band so loudly they drown out the failings of the tune.

It’s a jump up and down feast of speedy track after speedy track intercut with some Geordie banter. Angled guitars and in lyrics like those of ‘Limassol’ I can quite clearly see how certain music magazine quarters rate their writing as highly as The Smiths. But this could be cos I’m drinking absinth to try and get into the frame of mind required for enjoying ‘A Certain Trigger’ and before long I too am bouncing to ‘I Want You To Stay’ and a new song about going on a date when you’re ugly – easy Morrissey, I know it’s a gem.

More superlative writing and musicianship shines through in the aptly named ‘All Over The Shop’ and I’ve now donned rose tinted spectacles and indeed these guys are the saviours of punk pop rock. And more art as Paul lifts a big hardback book aloft, a proper one with no pictures on the cover and I suspect none inside either, I bounce harder, it appears to be making the end of the set approach more quickly.

‘Apply Some Pressure’ is another huge tract of over radio played brainwashing and is possibly up for an award for weakest musical song with the biggest hook in the world ever. Okay it has energy in bundles and I have to confess I do actually slightly like it and hum along.

The band drive us all on with ‘The Night I Lost my Head’ how apt I’m actually starting to like the messy music the slipping beat and the vocal which rides over it all. It’s popular and well done to the radio stations for getting it there, but if you don’t know the album from a hundred or so listens you’ll struggle to see what the fuss is about.

‘Going Missing’ concludes the performance and ending on a legs akimbo leap the trilby wearing one leaves.

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