North East England

Maximo Park – Queen’s Hall

Live music, Music Review

Maximo Park are thrilled to play the Queen’s Hall for the first time, even when things don’t go exactly to plan.

The music of Maximo Park, the indie rock outfit from northeast England, has been called many things over the band’s 20-plus-year history, including – but not limited to – “intellectual”, “energetic”, “intense”, “political”, “optimistic”, “endearing”, “romantic”, “emotional”, “passionate” and “sincere”. A lot of very broad, human qualities embodied in their sound and in their lyrics especially. At different times they’ve been categorised as “alternative rock” and “post punk” and “art pop” but regardless of pigeonholing the loudest reviews have generally been quite positive; critics like to say nice things about this band.

I’m not here to argue with the tastemakers of history but one thing that isn’t mentioned enough, in my opinion, is how awkwardly self-aware this band is and has always been. And when I say “this band” I’m really talking about its most expressive incarnation, its mouthpiece. I’m talking about Paul Smith, frontman, lyricist, self-anointed spokesperson, social media manager, mailing list usurper. The singer who appears to be 105% present in every performance and 110% in his head at all times.

Paul Smith has made a career out of turning the banal surreal, out of punctuating abstract scenes with his own unmistakable, visceral, whiplash-inducing lyrical couplets. He’s very good with the words. And dancing. And singing, too; excellent with the singing. Yet, when he’s on stage he often comes across as if he’s dodging imaginary word bullets. It’s like his superpower is intuiting what not to say so as to avoid getting retroactively cancelled in 30 years’ time. It must be a real struggle when you have such an actively extensive lexicon, to find just the right way of saying “this song is about geographical privilege in the arts” or “bodily autonomy”, for example – legitimate examples, by the way – and yet Smith insists on trying this for every song, or at least every other song and most songs in between. It’s distracting to watch him calculating in real time – he talks a lot for someone who says very little – but true fans and word nerds understand and appreciate the effort. He’s really a sensitive, new age guy.

Anyway, no-one talks about this nearly enough for my liking.

You know what makes this band so great? And, especially, what makes this band so great live?

Duncan Lloyd: Founder, guitarist, songwriter and former co-frontman – once-upon-a-time, before the incumbent magnetic frontman arrived – this guy is just effortlessly cool. His mere presence brings the average temperature of any room down by approximately six degrees Celsius. Understated is an understatement when you’re talking about Duncan Lloyd – he’s on stage, guitar is everywhere but you have no idea where it’s coming from because this guy has effervesced into pure sonic air. That’s right, this guy is so cool he defies physics. Also if you look up the Maximo Park Wikipedia timeline of band members you’ll see that for the last five years Lloyd is credited with guitars, keys, bass and backing vocals; the guy could literally form a Maximo Park one-man tribute band.

Speaking of one-man bands…

You know what else makes this band so great?

Tom English plays the drumkit like it’s an orchestra, like he’s an orchestra. Like he’s conductor and concertmaster; melody, counter melody, harmony and – of course – percussion. He exacts tonality, timbre and tempo from his instrument with the stone-faced charm of Charlie Watts doing his best impression of Animal from The Muppets, or vice versa. His style is emphatic, idiosyncratic. His fills often underscore the ferocity of Lloyd’s own percussive strumming without ever entertaining the spotlight for even a second, though you’d happily listen to him pound out a sixteen-minute solo, given half the chance.

I could go on. I will go on.

Jemma Freese, joined the band as a touring member in 2019 following original keyboardist Lukas Wooller’s departure and immigration to Australia – he’s doing fine; he DJs with a friend of mine in Melbourne sometimes, comes back to visit family in Yorkshire and complain about the weather. Jemma Freese is now an integral part of the Maximo Park live set-up and like Smith’s higher consciousness she probably doesn’t get the attention she deserves. There are times when, especially on the earlier songs, the only thing elevating their performance above the band’s very energetic original recordings is that deliciously indefinable X-factor that is the human voice, Jemma’s voice, and also a particularly juicy keyboard line delivered with just the right amount of spice. Jemma Freese is a musical master chef and connoisseur of tone. When she sings, you listen. When she plays, you feel something: sated.

What’s missing?

Bass. Okay, sure, sometimes in acoustic sets they’ll go without, but you wouldn’t go without, if you had a choice. Listening to Maximo Park songs without bass would be like watching The Wizard of Oz without the colour green. It’s the same story and the characters are all accounted for but suddenly that witch isn’t so scary and the Emerald City is, well, it’s just a city, isn’t it? There’s a fantastical magic about the basslines that Maximo Park deploy, something elemental, that was forged in their very beginning and that carries on today through the presence of Andrew Lowther who was loaned to the band by their musical brothers, Field Music, and who now, like a shared favourite toy, has to be agreeably passed back and forth between the two bands seemingly until one of them outgrows their enjoyment of him, or he’s broken beyond repair. Hopefully never the latter.

So these five humans get together in Edinburgh on a gloomy, autumnal Friday night in 2024. They bash out 18 songs in roughly 75 minutes. I know without checking my watch that it’s about 75 minutes because in the 30-something times I’ve seen them live they’ve only once pushed the 80-minute mark. They have a setlist formula and – eight albums in – they’re sticking to it. The sound is surprisingly good for a room that’s not designed for or suited to amplified instruments.

It’s going well for them until halfway through when a crackle in the monitors breaks Smith’s concentration and the system has to be rebooted. It’s fine, actually, they weren’t building great momentum with the new song / old song / new song rhythm at that point anyway, more of a haunted house stop-start carnival ride energy. This added bit of improvised drama plays into the performance-as-art-installation vibe they’ve been cultivating on the recent instore junket for Stream of Life, their latest collective release about geographical privilege and bodily autonomy (among other things). They persevere serendipitously towards emotional and technical catharsis through a semi-acoustic rendition of the album’s title track that’s really nice. And then they power through the rest of the set like it’s business as usual, which it is: Two back-to-back smash hits to close out the set and then two unsuspecting old favourites for the encore.

Now there’s a word to describe Maximo Park that doesn’t come up very often: Consistent. They’re a consistent live band. They’re consistent on record. They’re reliable. Professional. These aren’t the sexy qualities that we lust after in our Rock Gods and Pop Stars, these are traits on a whole other level. These are the characteristics we seek out in life partners, ride-or-die besties, colleagues, godparents to our children and, importantly, qualities we aspire to embody ourselves. We seek and we find them in our favourite bands. No wonder critics like to say such nice things about them.

Maximo Park – Boiler Shop

Live music, Music Review

Maximo Park kicked off their first proper UK headline tour in four years with an exuberant sold-out hometown show at Newcastle’s Boiler Shop on Saturday night. Having been rescheduled from the early summer due to ongoing restrictions the show took place just two and half weeks since the band last performed in the city. On that occasion a small run of shows celebrating their 2007 sophomore album Our Earthly Pleasures was offered in gratitude and as an incentive to fans who bought their newest album Nature Always Wins which charted at number 2 in the UK upon its release back in February. A series of album release out-stores was also scheduled in late August with a couple of festival slots thrown in as well, so in actual fact the band should have been in the full swing of national touring by now.

A lot can change very quickly in these times however, as we’re all acutely aware, and in the intervening period singer Paul Smith contracted, isolated and “recovered” from Covid-19, and so the first spark of magic around this night is that it even happened at all. Knowing the type of energetic performance Maximo Park usually deliver, it’s not unreasonable to think they might have delayed to allow Smith more time to restore his stage-fitness. Yet in taking a risk and going ahead, under the circumstances, they gave a performance that redefined audience expectations and the very concept of leaving it all on the stage.

Beautifully matched in support for this tour is the charming indie pop of Chester’s Peaness, who take as much delight in saying their band name as the audience does in hearing it. They seemed genuinely unfazed by the scale of the event or the weight of their responsibility, and their performance rightly carried an air of confidence and easy-going frivolity. Despite their dinner order not arriving in time to eat before going on stage they were utterly delightful, bopping and thumping their way through a set of tight harmonies and catchy refrains, welcoming all latecomers in from the bitter rain and wind outside.

From the moment Maximo Park walked on stage the atmosphere was thick with a kind of heavy joy and sparkling excitement; the room was ablaze with anticipation. For many people this was their return to live music and the band, knowingly, pitched a set to allow for maximum relief and release. New songs featured strongly throughout and were received with astonishing fervour. There can be no denying the singalong quality of recent singles like Baby, Sleep or I Don’t Know What I’m Doing but even the quirky stop-start ambling of Child of the Flatlands was met with grateful enthusiasm. “Thanks for going on that psychedelic journey with us there” Smith quipped when it was done. An interesting mix of iconic hits and obscure singles representing each of their six previous albums fleshed out the set, a particular highlight being Calm from 2009’s often neglected Quicken The Heart album. It was obvious from their response to each and every song that this was a crowd at capacity with love for the band and their music. Such rapturous, spontaneous and sustained applause might have felt excessive in pre-pandemic life but “in the parlance of our times”, as Smith referred to it, the greatest and most authentic expression of appreciation is surely a whoop and a clap. The band clearly felt it too; their joy at the exchange and pure thrill of performing live again couldn’t be contained and lit up their faces relentlessly.

If Paul Smith was feeling any lingering effects of illness on his lungs he didn’t let it show through his voice, neither his pitch nor sustain was impaired – in this writer’s opinion it was perhaps his best vocal performance of the year so far, and whether this was down to some extra effort in preparing to tour post-virus or simply a quality of the room on the night, it was undeniably powerful. While he purported to be losing his voice towards the end of the main set he still mustered a scissor kick during Books From Boxes, then when he admitted he was succumbing to fatigue the band blasted through a hyper rendition of Limassol before taking a quick break and returning for a three-song encore.

              “As you can clearly see / I’ve lost some luminosity / I hadn’t bargained for such intensity”

The opening lyric to Partly Of My Making bore a tangible irony that the audience seemed to relish. It’s not the easiest count if you’re dancing or swaying along but vocally the crowd gave as good as they got out of it. Had it not been demanded so emphatically the band probably could have gotten away without an encore, given the dazzling intensity of the first sixteen songs. But of course, they hadn’t played Apply Some Pressure by that point either and with each passing song and Smith’s energy waning there was a hint of disbelief when the moment finally came to close out the night with such a potent song. More than ever live music proves to be a healing force and Maximo Park know just how to deliver that vital medicine.

Bear’s Den – Newcastle University Student Union

Live music, Music Review

On their second round of touring in the UK this year Bear’s Den have perfected a balance between arena rock and acoustic folk, packing out large clubs while performing with astonishing intimacy to an ever expanding and keenly devoted fan base.

The second-to-last night of this run finds the band, performing as a six-piece, in the rather sleek subterranean venue of Newcastle University’s Student Union. It’s not the grandest space they’ve entertained but it’s also not the shabbiest. From touring heavily in their early years, Bear’s Den have learned to work a lot of different rooms, on any given night of the year; a crowded university basement on a Sunday night is well within their command. And anyway there’s a kind of calm to November gigs that suits this music; when the nights start drawing in early, everyone switches to their heavier coats, as the air densifies with cold and skies become a little less stable. Summer isn’t long forgotten but folk are still happy to be indoors; it’s hygge season, and it’s the ideal climate for a Bear’s Den gig.

This evening’s kindling, the first of two support sets, is provided by Tusks, the spine-tingling musical endeavour of Londoner Emily Underhill. She’s on double duties tonight, opening the show and running the merch table, and yet with only 20 minutes allocated to get this one job done she doesn’t force a performance, easing herself and the audience gently into her mesmeric melodies. Underhill sings graciously through her register, at times slipping into a soft falsetto, but she is at her most affecting when she employs her high, full voice, as on the stunning title track to her latest LP Avalanche. Quieter moments like Demon (“…it’s actually a love song”) test the warmth of the early crowd and, gratefully, they seem to be thawing.

At 8pm the crowd has almost trebled, with a restless rabble engulfing the room as Flyte take to the stage. Although technically now a trio, since the departure of keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Sam Berridge earlier this year, Flyte have maintained their full-bodied soundscape and delighted audiences throughout the summer with the addition of Jessica Staveley-Taylor (aka “Jess from The Staves” aka “one-third of The Staves”) into their line-up. Opening with a couple of songs from their debut album The Loved Ones, the set is kind of a slow burn up to White Roses, after which the crowd is a lot more settled and receptive. It’s just as well because the band follow this up with their breath-taking a capella cover of Alvvays’ Archie, Marry Me which, if you haven’t heard it, is about the kindest bit of self care you can offer your ears, at any time of year. Go; look it up now and feel the nourishment! They finish off with two crackers in Cathy Come Home and the glowing album opener Faithless.

The stage is dark before Bear’s Den emerge; a disorienting red aura fills the air as the unusually dramatic but iconic opening of Thus Spake Zarathustra heralds the main event. There’s no denying that this particular piece of music will heighten the anticipation of anyone’s arrival but Bear’s Den are not the showiest of bands, so it’s only fitting that they don’t actually walk on until the theme has played out in full; the gag is funnier when they don’t take it to that obvious, excessive conclusion. Humour is one of the band’s many charms.

Leading off with Fuel On The Fire, Elysium and Dew On The Vine, the set has a fairly similar running order to previous shows on the So that you might hear me tour, with the inclusion of two brand new tracks from the band’s forthcoming Only Son of the Falling Snow EP. The first of these is the title track which lead singer Andrew Davie describes as “a kind of Christmas carol, reflecting back over your life”. True to form, it’s a sorrowful meditation backed by some incongruous major chords and uplifting trumpet. It’s glorious. This is followed up with the – possibly even more exquisite – piano-lead ballad The Star of Bethnal Green, which takes its name from a pub adjacent the studio where Kev Jones conceived it. The lyrics paint love as a spiritual experience, at once inspiring, hopeful and comforting. Even in its relatively bare form it feels brighter than most songs in the Bear’s Den catalogue. And as festive folk songs go it’s no less than butterfly-inducing! It’d be show-stopping but Bear’s Den control their own inertia and it’s from here straight into Crow, a bona fide tear-jerker that depicts grief in a way that is uniquely Bear’s Den.

Davie has a knack for relating extraordinary human emotions through deeply personal experiences; his inclusion of very specific details, dates, names, locations, renders a stronger and more immediate connection to the particular events or relationships he’s recounting, as in Hiding Bottles and Above The Clouds of Pompeii, but his broader language leaves scenes open for listeners’ own attachments. This manner of lyricism, this telling-all-without-telling-everything style of writing is one of the reasons fans become so endeared to the band; seeing themselves and their lives in the songs, feeling connected in their shared humanity. At its very least live music is a communal experience.

The unpretentious, candid honesty of their delivery further sets the band apart, such as when they go “off-mic” to hear the crowd singing along to Magdelene. When they unplug completely to perform Don’t Let The Sun Steal You Away unamplified from the edge of the stage it receives one of the loudest rounds of applause all night, igniting the band and setting them on a skyward trajectory. These moments are unique to each crowd no matter how many times the band plays the same set of songs.

The Love That We Stole sounds bigger and bolder than it ever has. The guitars grow louder across Red Earth & Pouring Rain as heavy red light flickers. After the threatening and thunderous build on When You Break, driving and anthemic Auld Wives feels like respite. So much for the calm! The “last song” and “encore” are exposed as conventions but when the band return after a brief period of rousing applause they offer the sincerest and humblest thanks. And when they step out into the centre of the audience to perform Blankets of Sorrow they bring the communal experience to another level of intimacy. It’s a cosy place to be on a Sunday night in November.

Lord Huron – The Sage

Live music, Music Review

“We’ve always been a ghost-friendly band” quips Ben Schneider. “It’s good to see they’re out tonight especially in the upper levels. They’re going fucking nuts up there by the way” he jokes while he demonstrates an exaggerated style of dad-dancing. It might be a surprise to UK fans of Lord Huron to find the band booked into such an extravagant venue as Sage One in the beautiful Gateshead complex but by the end of their spirited performance there could be no doubting, this is a band who belong on the big stages.

Other venues on this leg of the Vide Noir tour have been as varied as any the band has ever played; from a night at London’s famous Roundhouse to the obscure Sheffield nightclub, Plug the night before their appearance in the north-east. Schneider points out that they’ve never played on this side of the river before and it seems by the crowd’s response that they’ve also travelled from outside the local area. This is the second round of touring in the UK for Lord Huron this year and they’ve made certain to cover new territory once again, bypassing Manchester in favour of Liverpool, and leaving out Scotland, Ireland and Wales altogether. It’s perhaps unsurprising then to find rows of empty seats in such a grand concert hall, for a band who typically fly under the mainstream radar, however this void in no way diminishes the band’s performance. The energy radiating from the stage throughout their set is just enough to reach the souls at the very back of the hall without black-braining them in a cacophony of distorted guitars, storming bass, luscious harmonies, turbulent percussion and eerie theramin. All these sounds exist within the space but never is one found wandering aimlessly.

The set is heavy on tracks from the latest release, “Vide Noir”, which sees the band experimenting a bit more with the dark side of studio magic. There are times, before the band first emerges on stage and at occasional intervals throughout, where a mysterious voice urges listeners to “follow the emerald star” while a jazzy lounge tune grooves in the background. These mellow moments are offset by Schneider’s resonant vocals and Miguel Briseño’s pulsing bass. Opening with the buoyant but chorus-less teaser Never Ever, the band lay their intentions bare: We came to rock! The feeling is mutual, at least on the floor where punters are bouncing around, fists pounding the stratosphere in attempts to reach a heightened state of elation.

The World Ender is a dark and brooding tale that brings everyone crashing back to barren earth, unsure how they arrived and curious to see what fates await. Meet Me in the Woods continues their journey into the unknown before emerging through the black magic of Secret of Life and the character study of a chance meeting with an undead World Ender in Dead Man’s Hand. Schneider’s hair refuses to be contained beneath his fetching fedora and the hat meets the ground at regular intervals as the band lift off on more raucous songs like Back From The Edge and Ancient Names, Pts. 1 & 2. There are also times when Schneider removes his headwear for romantic effect as on the crooners Wait By The River and When The Night Is Over. There’s a sonic theme to these songs on the record that is well spaced in the live set, always keeping the crowd in anticipation of their next wayward turn.

The echo of an owl, a distant thunderstorm and crackling campfire lead into a string of crowd favourites from the band’s debut LP, 2012’s “Lonesome Dreams”. Ends of the Earth, Ghost on the Shore and She Lit A Fire instantly transport devoted listeners back the band’s earlier explorations while providing an atmospheric shift in the tone of the evening. It’s subtle but cleverly crafted. Moonbeam and Hurricane stir up the crowd with additional guitarist Brandon Walters and keyboardist Misty Boyce having their own dance-off either side of drummer Mark Barry. It’s a fun set and the audience can’t help but catch the vibe too.

Between the pulsating green lights that silhouette the band on the Ancient Names twin-set there’s a romantic interlude from “Strange Trails” in the form of La Belle Fleur Sauvage and Fool For Love which sees Schneider throwing flowers into the audience before accepting certain death in a bar fight over the object of his affection. It’s the kind of dramatic contrast fans have come to expect from the last two albums and it’s well received by the audience, by now hustling to keep up with the twists and turns of the night. Way Out There takes them gently by the heart and leads them through the dark spectral landscape. The set winds into its natural close with Time to Run. The energetic acoustic anthem is embellished with flourishes of Tom Renaud’s gloriously crystalline guitar, playing out the main set before another haunting voiceover recites a poem composed explicitly for the Vide Noir shows featuring, among its lines, every song title from the album. It’s weird but it fills the void left by the band’s departure.

There’s no need for an awkward, forced encore – not that the crowd weren’t demanding one anyway – and when the band re-emerge from the darkened recesses at the edge of the stage they bring yet a new energy with immortal hit The Night We Met. The song has been popularised by its use in various TV drama series but the core fans knew it as the bittersweet album closer to “Strange Trails” over 3 years ago. On this occasion there’s a hopeful sense that Lord Huron will return to UK theatres of this scale in the not too distant future, to wow new audiences with their unique stories, curious characters and vivid soundscapes. Nothing could exemplify this more than the jubilant finale, The Stranger. Delighting their audience with arguably their most successful single and following it up with one of their least known tracks is the kind of stunt a band like Lord Huron can pull off in any setting, such is their devoted listenership and the inspiring diversity of their catalogue.

Rumours of another turn through Europe next year have left fans hanging on the edge of the known realm, aching to see what mysterious encounters lay beyond.

Field Music – St Luke’s

Live music, Music Review

Like the turning of an old fashioned wind-up toy, there’s a kind of humble anticipation that precedes the first outburst of genius from Field Music; you know it’s coming, there’s a tension in the air. Still it strikes you with stunning velocity, a bubbling polyphony of cosmic sounds storming over a clinical backbeat. It’s hard to believe there are only 8 people on stage, such is the immense intricacy and variety of noises they create. The band is a self-contained orchestra performing uplifting and progressive pop music so exact in its conception that they feel the need to apologise repeatedly for their errors, however unnoticeable. But in the band’s own words “them that do nothing make no mistakes” and Saturday night in Glasgow is all the better for their efforts, flawed or otherwise.

There’s an elated ‘whoop’ from the crowd as cracking lead single Count It Up, from the latest album Open Here, begins. With pithy self-awareness David Brewis spins privilege and positivism superbly. Radio-friendly Disappointed receives a similarly spirited response from the audience but it’s clear throughout that fans aren’t only here for the easy listening. In an instant everything is angular; there’s racing, jolting piano and wirey bass synth. A cacophony of percussive clicks, pops, tings and shuffles lay out cross-rhythms too precise to be mere happenstance and yet the atmosphere remains one of spontaneity and surprise. Intense flute flourishes from Sarah Hayes compete periodically with waves of Pete Fraser’s wild saxophone. And subversive lyrical undercurrents delivered through the Brewis brothers’ signature short phrases are a testament to their wit and humour, as much as to their musical intelligence. Instruments are always changing between the two leads, with each displaying equal aptitude for drums and guitar whilst singing. That’s not to say the music is too irregular for comfort; there are persistent grooves, steady beats and meticulous bass lines. It’s just always interesting and never boring.

Each song offers a glimpse into the world of its composer. No King No Princess addresses gender stereotyping and equality through the tender eyes of a parent. It’s more fun than it sounds thanks largely to the joyous addition of Liz Corney’s voice. The banter is top notch too; tongue in cheek comments about the rugby have the crowd on side but there is genuine praise and gratitude to the venue and audience for being so lovely and warm on an otherwise very chilly St Patrick’s Day night. Not only are Field Music obscenely clever musicians, they’re also nice guys. The show concludes with an unplanned 2-song encore, one each from David and Peter in the interest of “fraternal equality”. The whole evening is a monumental delight to the very last note, credited to the rare alchemy of this incredibly talented collective; perfect despite their imperfections.

Time In Joy

Them That Do Nothing

Count It Up

Disappointed

A House Is Not A Home

Goodbye To The Country

Let’s Write A Book

Checking On A Message

The Noisy Days Are Over

Share A Pillow

No King No Princess

How Many More Times?

Just Like Everyone Else

Stay Awake

(I Keep Thinking About) A New Thing

It’s Not The Only Way To Feel Happy