Garret Cleland posted on April 07, 2009 08:39
Maximo Park (live in The Academy, Dublin)
Review Snapshot: The Geordies return to Dublin to play new material and their old familiar songs to a packed Academy. As always they provide an energetic and enjoyable show, but sadly the new tracks don’t excite as much as I had hoped.
The Cluas Verdict? 7 out of 10
Full Review:
I was glad to see New Amusement on the bill. I don’t want to name names, but so often I get stuck watching some awful band with ideas far more grand than their talent. New Amusement once again impressed me. The newer tracks seem to follow on from the good standard they already set on ‘Any Port In A Storm’, but ‘Gone To Sea’ is still their stand-out track.
Any fans who had worries that Maximo Park would shirk away from playing their most popular tracks from their debut or their 2007 follow-up, ‘Our Earthly Pleasures’, preferring instead to debut songs from their upcoming new album had their fears allayed immediately as Maximo Park ripped into ‘Graffiti’ with the energy we have come to expect from them.
They are a fun band, and they know it. They hold no pretentions about what they are. They acknowledged this when introducing one of their new songs as being about a dancefloor, in fact, the second song in the set concentrating on that subject matter! And as a fun band, they entertain, with lead singer Paul Smith jumping around like an exuberant teenager, stamping on his pressure sensitive lit up podiums as they belted out ‘Girls Who Play Guitars’, ‘The Coast Is Always Changing’ and a host of their other hits.
The tracks off the new album do not seem to live up to the highs set by their first two albums, unfortunately. Even the band seemed to enjoy playing tracks like ‘Our Velocity’ and the excellent ‘Limassol’ more than previewing tracks like ‘In Another World (You Would’ve Found Yourself By Now)’ and ‘A Cloud Of Mystery’. ‘Let’s Get Clinical’ was an exception, a song that retains the catchy hooks that made the debut so instantly likeable. Perhaps they just need time to grow into these new songs. We will see when ‘Quicken The Heart’ is released in a couple of months.
Garret Cleland
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