Maximo Park, Manchester Apollo

Saturday October 7th 2007

There is something strangely comforting about hearing your native accent when you live away from the place you grew up. Luckily for me, I can experience this feeling whenever I go to see Maximo Park. Paul Smith’s Teesside twang, to be mistaken for a Geordie accent at one’s peril, is music to my ears.

Manchester Apollo sold out months before this much-anticipated gig, and the treat of two hotly-tipped support acts, Blood Red Shoes and Good Shoes, was a none-too-shoddy (ha!) move by the Park. The North East’s most important band kicked off with the rabble-rousing ‘The Coast Is Always Changing’, highlighting an unshakable tightness that certain NE teams’ defences could take note of.

Maximo Park really are Smith’s band; he commands the stage like a more angular Charlie Chaplin – strutting, leaping and throwing shapes with abundant energy. Overt enthusiasm was what stood out most the last time I saw the band, who had pipped Arctic Monkeys to the headline spot on the tour. Almost half of the crowd deserted the Apollo after watching the (dare I say it) slightly over-hyped Monkeys, and missed the most energising display since Ryan Jarman swallowed a bucketload of Duracells.

This time around, in a bigger venue, everyone is here for the Park. The crowd react well to a healthy mix of old stuff and new songs from the band’s second and latest album, Our Earthly Pleasures. My only disappointment was not hearing their cover of Justin Timberlake’s ‘Like I Love You’, which is a proposed B-side for their forthcoming single ‘Russian Literature’.

However, this is a novel aside when compared to the increased epic sounds heard on their new long player. ‘By The Monument’ is enthralling, Smith’s emotional outpouring receiving rapturous applause from the audience who feel his every ache. ‘Girls Who Play Guitars’, when heard in the same session as the indie classic ‘Apply Some Pressure’ shows just how far the band have come in a relatively short time.

‘Our Velocity’, plausibly the band’s biggest hit single to date, is what ends the main set. Numbers flash across the impressive backdrop as Smith and his partner in crime, keyboard player Tom English, go wild. On their return for an encore, the post-punk fuzz of ‘Acrobat’ silences the gig-goers for a standalone minute, before, with the rip-roaring anthem that is ‘Graffiti’, Smith calls it a night – a bloody good one at that. “And that’s enough…”

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