I left this gig high, with the impression that the crowd had loved the show almost as much as I had, from the cheering and calling Maxïmo back on for an extended encore. However, all I overheard on the journey home were comments about how average it had been.
So that's my 'taking-other-people's-opinions-into-account' quota met. Personally, I thought they were pretty good. While putting up posters before the gig with my friend (who works at the Academy) I saw Lukas Wooller eating his dinner in the Academy canteen. I feigned nonchalance, as my friend could lose his job for approaching band members, it's against the rules...but Lukas could see from my Maxïmo Park shirt and vaguely starstruck expression that I had noticed him. We also saw Duncan Lloyd wandering rather aimlessly around on the balcony, exploring the venue maybe, or just lost. It was a little dreamlike, but I'm not usually one to 'freak out' on seeing my favourite musicians. An uttered 'God, it's Duncan as well' sufficed.
The support acts were both average. Stricken City up first sounded a little like Florence & The Machine, and the songs were okay but repetitive. I wasn't struck (pun intended). The second support were Bombay Bicycle Club, a band I've heard of and have been told I should like. I wasn't too impressed though, they could play their guitars but they chose not to in many tracks; the lead singer looked like he was on some kind of hallucinagenic stimulant and the bassist looked like he was on some kind of sedative. The crowd seemed to like it though, there were chants of "BBC!" and cheering.
Maxïmo Park launched into The Coast Is Always Changing at about half past nine, and the crowd were having a good time. I was about 2 rows back, but the front row were unusually tall so I couldn't see much. All the same, I could see Paul Smith with his dramatic facial expressions and Lukas with his rigid dancing behind the keyboard. (Sometimes I think Paul's just in a band so he can dance like a man possessed: he'd probably get chucked out of a club for scaring the clientele, but he's allowed to do it when he's the frontman of a band.) They're the personalities onstage. Archis Tiku just stood at the back, Duncan got on with playing his guitar, and Tom English played drums rather regally, haloed by pink and purple lights every time I looked.
I can't recall the full order of the setlist, but these are the songs they played as far as I can remember: The Coast Is Always Changing, The Penultimate Clinch, Girls Who Play Guitars, Going Missing, Our Velocity, Let's Get Clinical, Tanned, Nosebleed, Overland West Of Suez, By The Monument, Questing Not Coasting, I Want You To Stay, Books From Boxes, Postcard Of A Painting, Roller Disco Dreams, Limassol, Wraithlike, The Kids Are Sick Again, and then the encore: I Haven't Seen Her In Ages, Graffiti and Apply Some Pressure. Graffiti they added because the crowd were being 'very kind' (hence my suprise at the abundance of negativity from people afterwards). A group of girls and I shouted for Graffiti, so I want to believe they played it because of us, but it's probably not true. I'd forgotten how amazing surround sound is for Maxïmo Park songs, with the textural interplay between keyboards, bass and guitar being panned across the room.
8/10
Showing posts with label maxïmo park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maxïmo park. Show all posts
Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Saturday, 28 March 2009
10 Songs I Love Right Now - 28/03/09
High time for another of these I think.
Freakin' Out is possibly the most uptempo song about boredom you will ever find. It's about that month when you weren't going through relationship problems, weren't really in love with anything, didn't need money, weren't recovering from a serious addiction - and the absence of anything interesting was driving you mad. Everyone's felt it. This song captures that, with a fantastic little guitar solo and a catchy chorus. If you want to hear Graham at his most sensitive best, outside of Blur, listen to the beautiful Ribbons And Leaves as well.
Bite Hard is the best song on Franz's third album, Tonight, from the gentle but unnerving piano introduction, with unsettling lyrics, to the ambiguous cries of 'Bite hard!', to the fantastic upbeat synth solo. It's perfect to wake you up in the morning, and it's brilliant live, and it encapsulates the singalong silliness of Franz at their best.
The Libertines - What a Waster
What A Waster was not a crap first release. It was not a 'This band have potential, but we're gonna have to wait and see' track. This song, rightfully, gained The Libertines a ridiculous amount of hype as the British front line in NME's 'New Rock Revolution'. This track was, and is, a punk rock explosion of anger and youthfulness, referencing Ulysses and the Beano and the Book of Revelation, shot through with sadness, bursting with expletives and oozing talent...a brilliant song.
Levellers' most recent release, Letters From The Underground, is an angry, rough record, with guitar solos and fast fiddle sections and political lyrics; it is typical Levellers. This song stands out however as being a bit different. It's sentimental, looking at failing love: 'it's just one kiss to build a dream upon'. It's softer, more thoughtful, and has some lovely melodies.
The Strokes - New York City Cops
Like Last Nite, New York City Cops is a snapshot of a moment in time, in New York City, at night. It opens with Julian Casablancas being daft - "Oh! Haha, I meant: Ah! No I didn't mean that at all." This is endearing, especially with his undeniably sexy voice. For once, The Strokes abandoned their extremely repetitive strum-strum-strum-strum formula (at least on lead guitar) until the chorus. It's a welcome break.
Peter Doherty - New Love Grows on Trees
It is hard to sum up the brilliance of this song in a paragraph. It's beautiful, telling of the foolishness of teen promises and decisions ('If you're still alive when you're 25, will I kill you like you told me to? Well I really don't want to.'), telling of growing up, telling of new love growing on trees (?), all sung in Peter's fitting drawl over ambient electric distortion and acoustic guitar. It's so much more than pretty.
The Hair, now Club Smith, are one of the better new bands to make use of the fashion for electronic synths and samples in British music right now, because they combine it with catchiness, great percussion and some really (dare I say it) funky songs. Half Cut is a walk-along-the-road-smiling track.
Sonic Youth are still up there in my favourites, and now I've found Dirty, that's where they're staying. Purr growls along in two-chord sultriness: it's violent, youthful, brilliantly played garage rock. The opening riff is life-affirming and gives me the shivers. The lyrics are simple but definitely thought out. Almost as brilliant are the melancholy Wish Fulfillment and Chapel Hill from the same album.
A new track from the new album Quicken the Heart, due out in May, Wraithlike has the lo-fi edginess of A Certain Trigger without the polish of album number two. It's a return to their roots, only faster, angrier and with more interesting time signatures.
Peter Doherty - Broken Love Song
Played with 4 guitars onstage live, Broken Love Song is a very pretty track, with lovely lyrics about loneliness and a chord sequence to die for. Nice vibrato on the electric guitar makes this track, as well as Pete's voice, which works very well on this softer album. Want more of Peter being poetic? Try I Am the Rain, it's not as good musically but it's got nice introverted lyrics. Lots of metaphor.
I've been listening to a lot of music this month. Last week last.fm told me I'd listened to about 2 full days of music on my iPod and computer alone. Check these songs out, they might do for you what they do for me.
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