Maximo Park

The room feels oddly under-rammed: there are people waving their arms, clapping their hands, going off, yet there are spaces aplenty amongst the assembled throng of fanboys ‘n’ girls and industry types, pen-pushers and cheque-signers alike. A thousand people queued for tickets for this intimate Maximo Park performance, in a club they last played a couple of years ago before debut album A Certain Trigger blasted their profile towards the stars; it seems that some ‘lucky’ recipients of gold-dusted passes elected to stay away.

Not DiS, though: we’re not getting sweaty at the front but we are enjoying having a top ten act only a few feet from our face. Bathed in lights blue and red, and wearing an absurd bowler hat to disguise whatever shortcomings he has up top, Paul Smith controls the stage from the outset. The vocalist is in a fine mood – his breathless between-song banter is appreciated, and he’s visibly having a ball as he roars through a selection of songs from the released-earlier-today Our Earthly Pleasures LP. ‘Girls Who Play Guitars’, ‘Russian Literature’ and particularly ‘The Unshockable’ are already live favourites, and the front few rows go suitably mental upon their airing. Smith rolls from one side of the stage to the other, thrusting arms out, straight, over acolytes like some sort of reformed Nazi, working only for the powers of good, for the force of unity. He is a bringer together of men, women and children this evening; each and every one of his followers is thoroughly appreciative.

The loudest receptions are, perhaps obviously, reserved for the A Certain Trigger numbers and recent chart success ‘Our Velocity’: far bolder and more boisterous live than on record, the latter is an undisputed highlight of a set peppered by moments of magic. But it’s a pair of earlier singles, ‘Going Missing’ and ‘Apply Some Pressure’, that stick in the memory once the crowd’s ejected into the Oxford Street night; both were witnessed by this writer back in 2004, and they retain their vibrancy even now, especially when bouncing around the walls of such a small, historically special venue.

While Maximo Park have progressed admirably from tiny clubs to arena stages, their roots are clearly dear to them – they play tonight as if they’re headlining Wembley, and their enthusiasm to maintain a level of excitement throughout is entirely reciprocated. Granted, DiS has had a few lagers by the time an encore is requested and delivered, but even without additives in our blood we’d be nodding a head vigorously to songs so immediate and infectious. Two thumbs up, then, from those that made the effort.

Photograph taken by Holly Erskine and taken from her Flickr page, here. Please tell her it's great.