The Art of Longevity Episode 6: Maximo Park, with Paul Smith
06/25/21 • 69 min
Music critics have tried to classify the music made by North East England’s Maximo Park for the past two decades, eventually converging on the term ‘art pop’. Yet Paul Smith, the band’s singer and main co-songwriter (with guitarist Duncan Lloyd) describes their music thus as:
“Odd but still pop music. Weird but anthemic. Music with a literary influence but also immediate - in some ways primitive - music that tries to slap you in the face a little bit, but twangs its way back to being pop. We try to make it accessible, if only to ourselves”.
Only Smith could describe Maximo Park’s music in that way and it’s perfect. No wonder perhaps, since he has practiced since the band’s early days when Smith wrote his own marketing copy for early gigs (‘unruly pop’ was one elevator pitch from Maximo’s early days). With his art school background and literary leanings Paul Smith can express himself through music more than most - the thinking person’s pop lyricist if you will.
While I worry that Maximo Park may be limiting their audience to the world’s intellectually curious (and possibly Northern sympathisers), the band’s most recent album ‘Nature Always Wins’ was a number two charting record. While some of the band’s previous albums have been statements of feeling - often political or raging against the machine in some way - their most recent outing seems more expansive and personal at the same time, while musically melding all their influences and styles into something of the perfect embodiment of Smith’s own definition. While Smith has worn his emotions on his sleeve lyrically before, Nature Always Wins has seen him hone the craft but be more pragmatic too. There might not have been a better song about the parental relationship than ‘Versions Of You’, nor indeed ‘Baby, Sleep’. To say they are both great examples of parent pop would just add more Maximo music theory into the mix!
After two decades on the British pop scene, Maximo Park is very much evolving. The band has been brave enough to step outside their trademark melodic hooks and catchy choruses to make a song like ‘Child Of The Flatlands’ (let alone make it the album’s lead single, something that brought to my mind The Police and their 1981 gloomy lead single ‘Invisible Sun’). The song is a step away from the emotional yearning or intellectual playfulness of previous singles to something more personal, reflective and deeper. The song was inspired by a walk Paul Smith took on the North East’s industrial path. That bleak, abandoned beauty of the industrial wastes close to their homeland has inspired one of their best ever songs.
When it comes to longevity, the band has stuck to the art and put its trust in partners (Prolifica and PIAS these days) to get their records to public, yet the desire to be accessible has always been there. From Paul Smith’s point of view, gratitude to the early days of decent record company advances and tour support (WARP records in those days) allowed the band to simply focus on the music, song-by-song, album-by-album and tour-by-tour. A Northern work ethic combined with the art school sensibilities hasn’t done them any harm over the years. However the modern way is a necessity too: hence in 2021 a YouTube Premier of Nature Always Wins, presence on socials, playlist meetings and radio edits.
After all, in Paul’s own words “We were lucky to be in the spotlight and over the years, the light may brighten or dim, but we’ve still managed to stay in it. We’re not daft”.
Humble to the last and doing just fine. It won’t be long before National Treasure status is suitably assigned.
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Music critics have tried to classify the music made by North East England’s Maximo Park for the past two decades, eventually converging on the term ‘art pop’. Yet Paul Smith, the band’s singer and main co-songwriter (with guitarist Duncan Lloyd) describes their music thus as:
“Odd but still pop music. Weird but anthemic. Music with a literary influence but also immediate - in some ways primitive - music that tries to slap you in the face a little bit, but twangs its way back to being pop. We try to make it accessible, if only to ourselves”.
Only Smith could describe Maximo Park’s music in that way and it’s perfect. No wonder perhaps, since he has practiced since the band’s early days when Smith wrote his own marketing copy for early gigs (‘unruly pop’ was one elevator pitch from Maximo’s early days). With his art school background and literary leanings Paul Smith can express himself through music more than most - the thinking person’s pop lyricist if you will.
While I worry that Maximo Park may be limiting their audience to the world’s intellectually curious (and possibly Northern sympathisers), the band’s most recent album ‘Nature Always Wins’ was a number two charting record. While some of the band’s previous albums have been statements of feeling - often political or raging against the machine in some way - their most recent outing seems more expansive and personal at the same time, while musically melding all their influences and styles into something of the perfect embodiment of Smith’s own definition. While Smith has worn his emotions on his sleeve lyrically before, Nature Always Wins has seen him hone the craft but be more pragmatic too. There might not have been a better song about the parental relationship than ‘Versions Of You’, nor indeed ‘Baby, Sleep’. To say they are both great examples of parent pop would just add more Maximo music theory into the mix!
After two decades on the British pop scene, Maximo Park is very much evolving. The band has been brave enough to step outside their trademark melodic hooks and catchy choruses to make a song like ‘Child Of The Flatlands’ (let alone make it the album’s lead single, something that brought to my mind The Police and their 1981 gloomy lead single ‘Invisible Sun’). The song is a step away from the emotional yearning or intellectual playfulness of previous singles to something more personal, reflective and deeper. The song was inspired by a walk Paul Smith took on the North East’s industrial path. That bleak, abandoned beauty of the industrial wastes close to their homeland has inspired one of their best ever songs.
When it comes to longevity, the band has stuck to the art and put its trust in partners (Prolifica and PIAS these days) to get their records to public, yet the desire to be accessible has always been there. From Paul Smith’s point of view, gratitude to the early days of decent record company advances and tour support (WARP records in those days) allowed the band to simply focus on the music, song-by-song, album-by-album and tour-by-tour. A Northern work ethic combined with the art school sensibilities hasn’t done them any harm over the years. However the modern way is a necessity too: hence in 2021 a YouTube Premier of Nature Always Wins, presence on socials, playlist meetings and radio edits.
After all, in Paul’s own words “We were lucky to be in the spotlight and over the years, the light may brighten or dim, but we’ve still managed to stay in it. We’re not daft”.
Humble to the last and doing just fine. It won’t be long before National Treasure status is suitably assigned.
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Previous Episode
The Art of Longevity Episode 5: James, with Tim Booth
When you’ve been getting away with it as a seven piece band for nearly four decades, with 22 albums behind you - something’s got to give when it comes to longevity. Especially when, in the case of James and Tim Booth, you’re on yet another roll. The band has made another vital album (All The Colours of You) despite the backdrop of a global pandemic and, in Booth’s case, an unsettling period on the run from the increasingly virulent wildfires encroaching on his family home in the Topanga Canyon of L.A.
I wanted to find out just what has driven James on, through a prolonged pre-breakthrough struggle in the 80s, a break-up in 2001 and what must have been many creative ups and downs in-between. One has a sense of Booth as shaman, a leader of his merry band of brothers (and now sisters, with the addition of percussionists and vocalists Deborah Knox-Hewson and Chloe Alper). And leader too by divine inspiration, of James’ devoted audience. A cult, but one with entirely positive vibes.
James creates songs from jams, that’s how they work: nobody controls it. For James, it’s all about inviting the muse to descend and join together with the band’s four core jamming members (Booth, Saul Davies, Dave Banton-Power and bassist founder Jim Glennie). That’s perhaps why uber-producer and electronic music god Brian Eno (who has turned everyone down from The Red Hot Chili Peppers to REM) put in a request to be that muse and produce the band’s 1992 masterpiece Laid. ‘Honour thy error as a hidden intention ’ was a card drawn from Brian Eno’s oblique strategies deck in one session, but James already lived by that particular axiom.
From day one in 1983, the band had a philosophy and pact to always take risks - whether that be creating new songs from jam sessions to walking out on stage in front of the crowd before finalising the set. James’ are driven to experiment, and it’s remarkable that such fully formed songs as Beautiful Beaches, Sometimes, Say Something, Fred Astaire or Sit Down came from short improvisations. Then again, the band will jam over 100 pieces of music and zone in on the best 10-15 to make an album, setting the quality bar high.
As such, the band has survived members coming and going and the music industry changing beyond recognition - such that their last single to chart was Getting Away With It in 2001. That unsuccessful single slow-burned its way to become one of James’ anthems and their third biggest song on streaming, typically atypical James.
As Tim Booth enters his sixth decade on this earth, he is of course the polymath one might expect - teaching transcendental dance, writing a novel, acting a little here and there and meditating throughout. But as All The Colours of You beds in as another vital James album, Booth and James' three other core jamming members were already due to be in Scotland working on the next 100 jams that might lead to album 23.
Let’s hope the muse lays in wait.
Tim Booth spoke with Keith for The Art of Longevity, ep. 5!
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
Next Episode
The Art of Longevity Episode 7: The Coral, with James Skelly
The Coral is a band revered on the music scene - a real artist’s band. They are very accomplished musicians who first got together at school in the small Wirral town of Hoylake. The band members bonded over their many music icons, from The Beatles and the Small Faces to Acker Bilk and Del Shannon. Listening to a record by the Coral is a dizzying fairground tour of Liverpool’s music hall pop heritage mixed with American West Coast psychedelia and a lot else besides. Sometimes all in one song. Yet it sounds like no other band except The Coral.
Funny then that some 20 years after their debut, The Coral has made an album that sounds more like themselves than anything else they’ve done. ‘Coral Island’ is themed on the romantic ideal of the faded seaside town. The band has had an ongoing obsession with the sea since day one, but Coral Island is different. The band collaborated with artist Edwin Burdis to actually build the island and once it became a physical thing, the band’s imagination was stretched further to bring it to life with stories, characters and poetic interludes narrated by the Skelly brothers’ own Grandad.
The album is an end-to-end modern classic, yet the band’s singer James Skelly told me he expected the album would linger in obscurity, but it reached number two on the UK album charts and has received critical praise across the board. It’s probably their best record so far and if it’s too early to tell, then let’s say Coral Island is a potential masterpiece.
It’s nice to see a band as good as The Coral come full circle over the course of two decades. When the band was elevated to the top of ‘Britpop’ mania in 2002 with their song ‘Dreaming of You’ and their Mercury Prize nominated debut album, they had a great time basking in the limelight and usurping industry etiquette (a Freddie Mercury impersonator stood in for them at the Mercury Prize ceremony). However, The Coral also lost touch with reality. When they released a third album of spooky psychedelic jams, they thought it might get to number one (like their second album ‘Magic and Medicine’). It was perhaps an act of subconscious self-sabotage. A self-correcting mechanism. But at the time it’s just what the band wanted to do, though their judgement was somewhat skewed by skunk.
In episode 7 of The Art of Longevity, James Skelly walks me through the rest of this remarkable band’s story in a conversation we both thoroughly enjoyed, partly because I was very impressed by the combination of working class ambition, humble wisdom and complete dedication to artistry. There is no doubt when you hear James’s account of the band’s character and history, that The Coral would work their way through the mangle of the music industry and come out of it relatively unscathed. And, creatively speaking, even better.
In particular though, it’s the songs. Skelly and co do not lack a way with melody. As I put it to him, he could write Coldplay songs all day long, but then there are these things called minor chords...and The Coral never minded a little darkness and spookiness mixed in with the melody. No need for them to call Max Martin in to help write the next few hits (though I suspect Max is a fan). As James says himself, in The Coral’s early days he would kill for a song. Some 20 years in, he’s no longer in need of such morbid thoughts.
Get more related content at: https://www.songsommelier.com/
The Art of Longevity - The Art of Longevity Episode 6: Maximo Park, with Paul Smith
Transcript
Hello, I'm Keith Jopling from the song some Lea and you're listening to the art of longevity. Brett Anderson from suede once said that successful artists have all followed a similar journey comprising four stages of struggle, a stratospheric rise to the top, the crash down to the bottom. And then the Renaissance will reflect on the learnings wisdom, battle scars and wounds of major artists that have been decades in the music business and ask
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