Records - Maxïmo Park

INDIE

It may be a cliché, but second albums are tricky. Deviate too far from the sound that took you to the big time and ‘you’ve lost your touch’. Conversely, plough on down the same furrow and ‘you’ve run out of ideas’. And it’s in the latter camp that Maxïmo Park find themselves with Our Earthly Pleasures. Where their debut (2005’s A Certain Trigger) bristled with an angular punk aesthetic drenched in swirling Hammond organs, this follow-up retreads the same themes. ‘Our Velocity’ and ‘Nosebleed’ hurtle by with art pop abandon while there’s yearning heartbreak on ‘Karaoke Plays’. But they don’t have that spark that made them so compelling two years ago. Not a bad album, far from it, but more of the same as Maxïmo Park coast on neutral when they are capable of so much more.