Album Review: Maximo Park, "Our Earthly Pleasures"

are nowhere to be found on this record

Maximo Park, "Girls Who Play Guitars"
Mark Ronson, "Apply Some Pressure" (feat. Paul Smith of Maximo Park)

edit: I swear to god I knew the name of Maximo's first album was A Certain Trigger

second edit: I SWEAR TO GOD I KNEW Version WAS MARK RONSON'S SOPHOMORE ALBUM HENCE THE CLUMSY ITALICIZING EMPHASIZING THE IRONY. O SHIT, I GOT WARRANTS.

In an interesting paralell to the situation ten years ago, we may have plenty of wiggle room to go in this decade, but it's a fair bet that modern Britpop has already seen its moment come and go. There may well be incredibly enjoyable albums and singles still a ways down the pipeline at this point in the genre's current incarnation, but it's highly unlikely (if not flat-out impossible) for them to be delivered at the blinding pace at which they showed up during that magical year bookended by the Futureheads and the Rakes' respective debut albums; as staggeringly inconsequential as all those albums turned out to be, the panicky, nervous through-line connecting them all was simply too intoxicating to resist at the time. (Of course, one could easily raise the counter-argument that this same homogeneity of effect did more to undo the genre's viability than anything else; eventually, consumers will settle on the one album that best approximates the idealized form of the genre that they've been cultivating in their heads and send everything else back to the record store in epic fashion, which is why the imaginary people who come over to my apartment and nose through my stuff always register so much surprise to discover Capture/Release as the lone representative of this period in modern musical history in my record collection. But I digress.)

In a lot of ways, Maximo Park's debut album Apply Some Pressure epitomized all the virtues of the age, and in some of them it even demonstrated the potential for the aesthetic's future growth. Other bands might have had better ears for a hook or a gimmick, but no band on earth (or at least in England) was able to manifest pure urgency quite like the Parkers were; more than any of its contemporaries, A Certain Trigger sounded like a record made with the express intent to get itself released before someone else beat them to the punch. Unfortunately, it's this precise phenomenon which keeps Our Earthly Pleasures, their sophomore album, from demonstrating itself half as compelling as its older brother - artistic urgency is, after all, awfully hard to sustain when you've already proven yourself supernaturally adept at managing it.

That's not to say that Our Earthly Pleasures even remotely resembles a bad record; it's simply impossible to compare it to A Certain Trigger and not be stricken by the leaps Paul Smith & co. have made in the last year when it comes to being an Actual Rock And/Or Roll Band. Songs like "Girls Who Play Guitars" demonstrate a leap forward of Maoist proportions in terms of efficiency and articulation when broken down to their component parts like "lyrics" or "guitar lines"; I'd honestly call "Girls" one of the three best songs they've ever written, and it probably won't even get a single release until November, assuming it ever gets one in the first place. Still, the problem isn't even how... galling? is that the word I'm looking for here? it is to see a band which hooked me on their wild abandon suddenly start preaching the virtues of restraint - I'm not happy about it or anything, but anyone who's ever lived two or more years in a row understands how all youthful exuberance, no matter how genuine or earned-in-earnest it might be, tends to wither and die over time. No, the real problem at the root of Our Earthly Pleasures is that the game has simply changed; now it finds itself tilting at the second-finest guitar-pop record of the decade compositionally and lyrically, and like the rest of its brothers in second-generationhood, it's simply not a fair fight. Maximo's gift was always for performance rather than demonstration, and if Our Earthly Pleasures is any indication, now that they've found themselves in a position where they've got the attention of people looking to follow in their shoes they flat-out don't have much to say.

Of course, all of this is basically so many wasted words when comparing any song from Our Earthly Pleasures to Mark Ronson's Mitch Ryder'd-up revisitation of "Apply Some Pressure" for his sophomore LP Version. By any criterion available to man or beast, "Apply Some Pressure" is at best the fourth-best song on Version, but it's by far the most illustrative of its source now that Maximo's lead vocalist Paul Smith seems more in love with the serpentine power of double-tracking than in his own preturnatural yelp; despite widely surfacing nearly a month after Our Earthly Pleasures, Smith's performance on Ronson's version of "Pressure" remains the first glimpse of of his old enthusiasm for keeping up with his backing track, presumably because Our Earthly Pleasures devotes itself so single-mindedly to the task of making an album to which people will still be listening ten or twenty years down the line. The dueling ironies, of course, are that (1) just as before, that's exactly what all of the Park's contemporaries are trying to do, and (2) attempting to do this precise thing may be the single most effective way to cancel out all of Maximo Park's strengths, or at least all of the strengths they demonstrated on their first album. I'm all for bands developing over time and everything but damn, folks, if this is what we've got to look forward to from the class of '04-'05, we are in for one bumpy-ass ride. (Click here to buy Our Earthly Pleasures from Amazon.com, or here to buy Version from Amazon.co.uk)

The Killers, "Bones" (Tiga remix) - With Scott Stapp seemingly finally banished from the cultural discourse, I'm honestly not certain if there's anyone working in music today who inspire quite as much unbridled venom on my part as the Killers; in the interest of saving space, let's just say that I see them as having the same relationship to rock as P. Diddy has to voting and leave it at that. Nevertheless, I find myself inexorably drawn to any remix of any of their tracks by anyone with even the slightest shred of dancefloor acumen; I've even heard that worthless "I've got soul/But I'm not a soldier" song turned into a legitimate house-music axe murderer, no mean feat considering we're talking about the single most resigned-sigh-inducing lyric in recent memory not mulling over a track's merits as a "panty anthem". And, true to form, Tiga's remix of "Bones" is a world-fucker; words really can't convey just how much more palatable Brandon Flowers' sixth-grade stabs at depth become when backed by a track which in no way attempts to secure anything even approaching legitimacy. Of course, I wouldn't even be able to make that claim if the backing track Tiga pulled out of god-only-knows-where weren't arguably the best thing he's come up with since his take on "Sunglasses At Night"; his work here defines the appeal of his icy musical perfection in exponentially more adroit fashion than anything on Sexor, and that's even before the chorus bathes you in the majesty of his interpolation of the big hook to the Killers' original. I still think the Killers need to hire Jacques Lu Cont to produce their entire next album pretty much more than anyone needs to be doing anything anywhere ever, but after hearing this remix, I'd settle for Tiga guiding them through the musical birthing process; if he can wring something this close to Speak & Spell-era Depeche Mode out of the Killers when they're taking aim at boring-ass rock bluster, the possibilities to what he could construct for them with direct access are all but limitless. In the meantime, please enjoy this histrionic triumph, although you'll readily recognize that you hardly need my permission. (Tiga's remix of "Bones" is currently unavailable commercially, but in the meantime, visit his MySpace to hear more music)

Sarabeth Tucek, "Something For You" (Contino remix) - The original version of Sarabeth Tucek's "Something For You" is a pretty, if predictable, alt-country pining-away girl-n-gee-tar affair, but flip the record over and boy are you ever in for a treat. Contino's remix may take a few listens to fully sink in, but I speak from experience when I say that it'll absolutely bury itself in your consciousness; whether it's the gentle clatter of about six layers of instruments or the note-perfect evocation of wistfulness inherent in Tucek's voice cutting through them all like a scythe through a wheatfield, you have my word that there's a hook in here for you somewhere. Anyone in love with the empty-veined tone of records like Beach House or The Greatest will be unequivocally over the moon off this song, I can guarantee you that much; everyone else can go kill themselves for all I care. (Click here to order the "Something For You" single from Sonic Cathedral records)