It is rare for a band to successfully drive a pop song without great hooks -- those musical bits that sometimes joyously, sometimes maddeningly refuse to leave your head -- but on pure energy alone. Yet this is precisely what Newcastle's Maximo Park do. As dance rock goes, their tunes are ordinary, but their sound is turbo-charged by both singer Paul Smith's howls of an average Geordie bloke's exasperation and the band's bouncy, booty-shaking grooves.
Almost the entirety of "A Certain Trigger" is designed for dancing, though how you're supposed to move to the frenetic rhythms, propelled along by drummer Tom English, is another matter. The overall mood can be summed up in Smith's opening salvo to the album's best track, the brilliantly off-kilter "Graffiti": "Well, that's enough, I've had it up to here!" It's time to slam your beer down, loosen your skinny tie out and let your disheveled suit breathe. But then be sure to give a good listen to the clever chorus that follows, "I'll do graffiti if you sing to me in French," which should ensure that your release is all happily cathartic rather than destructive.
