Maximo Park have been round the block a few times now, and have recently released their fifth album ‘Too Much Information.’ Brain Cells and Leave This Island are the first two singles to appear off the record, and certainly mark a change in direction for the band. It seems that these singles aren’t indicative of the rest of the album however, as their keyboard player Lukas Wooler explained when we spoke with him…
“It’s a really varied album. It’s hard to look at one track in particular and say this represents the record. I think that five albums in we try and do something different on every record, and I think when you look back on what we’ve done you realise that we’ve covered quite a lot of ground stylistically what with singles, album tracks and b-sides and covers that we’ve done. And I think that gives us an inner confidence that makes us think we can do anything. We’re quite lucky in that we have Paul Smith; his vocal style is quite distinctive, and we wanted to expand that a bit as well. His vocal range is quite wide on this record, like Brain Cells for example is where he varies his style.”
A conscience change in the songwriting process appears to have had much to do with this development. “Putting space into music is something that we as a band find difficult, but we have been trying to do that on the last few records. That’s how we write songs really, we all sit in a room and play together. The songs end up with everyone playing at the same time and there’s a real density and intensity in a lot of our stuff – we’ve been slowly getting the hang of putting space in our music. One of the ways that we do that is to let Paul sing quite softly, in falsetto, so the music matches that, and we got a lot more space in our music.”
The album is the first that Maximo Park have part produced by themselves, and this is something that can really help change the overall sound of the music.
“We recorded the album in two phases and the second phase was in our own studio that we put together at the end of last year, and that really helps in terms of not being tied down to a certain way of doing things, especially when our previous albums were recorded in a traditional way where you rent a studio and time is money. Because we had our own studio we had the chance to try out some recording techniques that we always wanted to use. We’d written a lot of stuff, as we do, as a rough demo. And what happens when you go into a professional studio you kinda re-record the whole thing. This time we wanted to preserve the spirit of the demos. Duncan did a lot of guitars at home, Paul did a lot of lyrics at home, I did a lot of synths at home, and we thought what’s the point in re-doing it when it already sounds good, let’s just supplement what’s there. Normally the tracks are coming from different directions and we normally try make them cohesive, but this time we went with it and didn’t worry with how it’s going to fit together. We have this confidence now that whatever we do will capture the spirit of Maximo Park. So let’s do what’s best for each song. The way people listen to music now is different anyway with people listening to their ipods on shuffle and whatever, and I think people will deal with the new direction we’ve taken.”
Quite a lot of emphasis is placed on tying the different parts of the song together into one, but the next issue is ensuring that the songs are connected into one whole album. Lukas explains how the album fits together;
“Well, one thing I’m really happy with this record is the relaxed atmosphere, more so than previous records. There’s something about Paul’s singing and his lyrics seem very easy; that they’ve come quite naturally. There’s always been humour in our lyrics and I think you can detect that a little bit more, and that’s reflected in the music with the space. I think the lyrical themes are quite similar, and I think Paul’s doing a bit more story-telling like on Leave This Island which paints a strange and weird story, with lots of little images to pick up on.”
The album title itself then also seems to link in nicely with the album’s aesthetics.“‘Too Much Information’ as an album title was something we thought connected with a few things, and one of them is that we’ve always been known as a band who wears their heart on their sleeve with emotions there for all to see. Sometimes we find that people don’t know how to take that, bands are meant to be cool and hold stuff back. That’s not what we do, and the title was a cheeky nod to that; you might think it’s too much information, but we don’t hold back, and we never will.”
‘Too Much Information’ appears to be straight to the point then, which is somewhat similar to the band’s last album ‘The National Health,’ an album that immediately made a bold statement on the economic climate at the time. “There was a reference in the title to the current state of affairs. In a way ‘Too Much Information’ is like that too. I think you might agree that we live in an age where there’s too much information and that idea of trying to assimilate everything and finding you place in this huge stream of numbers and facts. It wasn’t a concrete idea for the album, but Alan Moore, the graphic novelist, was talking about how there’s going to be a point fairly soon in the next few years where the mass of human information doubles every few seconds and at that point things are going to get a bit weird. So we’re reaching this saturation point, and whether you feel it explicitly yet or not, it is something we’re going to have to deal with on a daily basis; the stream of news and media we constantly encounter.”
The ‘Too Much Information’ artwork.
The album cover for ‘Too Much Information’ is quite a striking image, with a man appearing to shave his tongue. We quizzed Lukas on the inspiration behind this.
“All the artwork has just got one person; the album artwork, the singles artwork and the videos. It’s by a guy called Matt Stokes who’s a video artist, who we know from school in Newcastle. We approached him and he liked the idea. One of his fascinations is underground movements; things that don’t exist anymore, or have gone through their heyday yet still keep going. Something like Northern Soul, or rave culture. He felt that this resonated with the music and lyrics that we showed him. We ended up looking at a lot of rave flyers and this just popped out at us. There’s something icky about that idea of someone shaving their tongue, and while it’s not a direct reference to anything in particular,we thought it was quite an arresting image. There’s also an aesthetic of nostalgia to it without being an obvious instagrammed filter way. There’s something about the way it’s drawn that made me acknowledge that’s it not a current thing, it feels like a punk image.” Certainly it is an image that is not easily forgotten and fits the album title quite well.
A major part of Maximo Park’s appeal would have to be the distinctive presence of frontman Paul Smith. Aside from his instantly recognisable voice the singer is rarely seen without his trademark hat. We asked Lucas just how important his image really is to the band.
“He’s always acknowledged that you need to have a strong image in pop, you know, look at David Bowie, or even The Velvet Underground who had shades or whatever. So it was a conscious decision on his part to acknowledge that ‘I’m not the best-looking guy around, or the coolest guy but if I wear something distinctive then people will remember that and can help us stick out from the crowd.’ I think anything like that can be good or bad, people can use it against you and mock you, but at the end of the day it’s about people remembering you. When you’re on a stage at a festival crowd for example and someone’s at the back, you need to have something larger than life to convey the energy of our sound.”
The bandmembers have made the occasional foray into the music world with various side-projects. This can sometimes lead to tensions within bands, so we asked Lukas if this was a good or a bad thing for Maximo Park.
“We’ve all done bits and bobs outside the band. I think it allows us to breathe a bit more. If you don’t do that, you’re trying to put all your ideas into one thing, always putting your energy into the band, and that doesn’t work. It’s like a pressure cooker and everyone’s fighting for their thing, their vision. Whereas if you feel you have a channel of expression outside the band then you can relax a bit more. And that’s what’s best for the band. What’s best for the band isn’t always the best for you or your idea, sometimes you have to compromise and say I’ll do something elsewhere, so I think that it’s a good thing for us to do.”
Finally we asked Lukas if he felt nervous about how the new album will be received, what with the slight change in direction.
“I think every time you put an album out you’re a bit worried about what people might think, but when people have heard four albums of our stuff they kinda know that we have a few strings to our bow, and we’ve not seen any negative reaction. I think people listen to our music for our emotional outlet and that’s still there, and if they can still hear that, and the music’s catchy, then it’s still Maximo Park.”
Maximo Park will be playing at Whelan’s on 28th February.