Plumbiferous Media

Maxïmo Park, native of New­cas­tle, is made up of a rel­a­tively stan­dard arrange­ment of instru­ments: vocals, gui­tar, key­board, bass, and drums. But stan­dard doesn’t only describe the instru­men­ta­tion; Maxïmo Park is fairly generic Brit/Alt Rock. How­ever, while the first two albums the band pro­duced were also gener­i­cally decent, Quicken the Heart seems to have sunk a cer­tain degree in quality.

Few prob­lems are notice­able in the instru­ment lines. The drum line often over­whelms the other instru­ments, but it remains inter­est­ing. The bass is hard to hear, but not par­tic­u­larly bad, and the rest remains some­where in the mid­dle range of quality.

Where Quicken the Heart really suf­fers is when larger ele­ments, phrases, and track sec­tions are con­sid­ered. There seem to be two types of tracks on Quicken the Heart: the very generic tracks, and the more exper­i­men­tal tracks. The generic tracks are not par­tic­u­larly bad, but most of them are so bland that they become entirely unin­ter­est­ing, though Maxïmo Park tries to mix it up by using odd rhythms in tracks such as “Wraith­like.” And even though the generic tracks are quite lack­lus­ter, the exper­i­men­tal tracks will have you yearn­ing for the generic tracks to return. These tracks, which mostly occur start­ing with “Let’s Get Clin­i­cal” through to “Over­land, West of Suez,” have dis­jointed short seg­ments that do not con­nect to each other, and do not form an over­ar­ch­ing pat­tern, result­ing in tracks that can become very tedious.

Paul Smith’s thick, rather heav­ily accented vocals are cer­tainly capa­ble of cre­at­ing the back­bone of Quicken the Heart, but rather than lack­ing qual­ity, they lack vari­ety. While Smith’s vocals show intent, they never fully express any emo­tion, and they remain rather unmov­ing. They’re there­fore not espe­cially grip­ping, an issue which becomes clear on the solid but cer­tainly not excel­lent “Wraith­like” and con­tin­ues through the album. The occa­sional vocal effects and mod­u­la­tions, such as those on “The Kids Are Sick Again,” aren’t well planned and cer­tainly don’t suc­ceed in mak­ing the vocals more inter­est­ing among a lack of move­ment in vocal style. Over­all, Smith isn’t a bad singer, but he’d cer­tainly ben­e­fit from a bit more planning.

While the lyrics of Quicken the Heart are a bit generic and not ter­ri­bly notable, it must be said for Maxïmo Park that they’ve man­aged to write lyrics which seem quite suited for Smith’s par­tic­u­lar vocal style. The lyrics fluc­tu­ate between such mediocre imagery as “bury me like dan­ger­ous waste” and “the com­fort­ing ache of the sum­mer hol­i­days” to deeper phrases like “we can’t fall from this world” and “we’re gonna wash our­selves in sin.” This has the effect of pro­vid­ing occa­sional inter­est­ing phras­ing amidst an album mostly pop­u­lated by inter­change­able expressions.

Quicken the Heart isn’t an espe­cially good or bad album. It man­ages to avoid both seri­ous flaws and strengths, thereby falling squarely in the mid­dle of the range. Smith’s voice is decent, but not great. The lyrics are mostly generic. The instru­men­tals have occa­sional inspired moments, but are usu­ally mediocre or worse. It’s hard to shake the feel­ing that, instead of improv­ing or wors­en­ing, Maxïmo Park is steadily mov­ing along the mid­dle path.

This post is tagged 40-49, Maxïmo Park