ALBUM REVIEW: Maxïmo Park – Nature Always Wins (Prolifica Inc)
A simple premise has helped North East alternative/indie rockers Maxïmo Park outlast the majority of their peers: never make the same record twice.
It’s a formula they have adhered to throughout their 20-year career, and thus we arrive at their seventh studio album, different again from their sixth, yet never straying too far from their tried and test template.
Previous album Risk To Exist (2017) was one of their most political, with vocalist Paul Smith’s lyrics honing in on the UK government’s austerity programme, the British class system, and the backlash against the European migrant crisis.
Four years on, Nature Always Wins is less angry and more contemplative, focusing on the bigger picture, getting older, relationships, and mankind’s place among everything as part of the age-old nature vs nurture debate.
It’s the band’s first album without founding member and keyboard player Lukas Wooller, who has emigrated to Australia, leaving Maxïmo as a three-piece consisting of vocalist Paul Smith, guitarist Duncan Lloyd and drummer Tom English.
Wooller’s departure left Smith, Lloyd and English seeking a different kind of fourth member – a producer who was also a musician. Atlanta-based Grammy-winner Ben Allen (Animal Collective, Deerhunter) fit the bill, but what the core trio couldn’t have anticipated was the worldwide coronavirus pandemic which made working together in person impossible.
Undeterred, band and producer embraced technological advances to perform real-time trans-Atlantic recording sessions – themselves in Newcastle and Liverpool, with Allen at the helm in Atlanta. The result is another hugely enjoyable record full of their trademark melodic twists and heartfelt, thought-provoking lyrics.
The standout song is Baby, Sleep, released in October as the lead single. Driven by Lloyd’s inimitable guitar and Smith’s deft turns of phrase, it’s about sleep deprivation, and is right up there with their best songs and surely destined to be as much a live staple as Graffiti and Our Velocity – yes, it’s that good.
Fellow single I Don’t Know What I’m Doing is another highlight, dominated by Lloyd’s piercing guitar, while Feelings I’m Supposed To Feel reminds me of Joshua Tree-era U2 (in a good way) with its prominent bassline, shuffling drumbeat and subtle guitar.
Opener Partly Of My Making didn’t grab me at first, but a few spins show it to be a real grower, while Versions Of You is a glorious, wistful-at-times slice of slick guitar-pop, which sounds like a future single.
Elsewhere, Meeting Up, set to an ’80s electro beat, examines relationships through echo-steeped, almost other-worldy vocals, and Ardour sees Smith and Pauline Murray (of North East punk rock royalty Penetration) cast a weary eye over the impersonal yet exhausting dating scene, singing “Swiping in my sleep, pinch-grab a magazine/What’s become of me, I’m scrolling in my sleep/This ardour is arduous.”
Things are brought to a close by the album’s least typical track, the five-minute-long Child Of The Flatlands, a psychedelic slow-burner which casts a lovelorn look toward the meaning of place and its impact on identity.
Maxïmo Park simply don’t make bad albums and Nature Always Wins is another gem whose many nuances emerge over time and repeated listens. 8/10.
