Maximo Park: Our Earthly Pleasures : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

They said it couldn’t be done, but Maximo Park’s Paul Smith has invented a new rock-star hairstyle: the bad literary comb-over. Bravo, Master Smith. He’s a poet of the people in the classic Brit-pop style – his funny thrift-store suits, his strong Newcastle accent, his habit of whipping out a book to read onstage. On Our Earthly Pleasures, he comes off like a young John Cleese playing Morrissey, singing, "When it comes to girls, I’m mostly hypothetical/If I list their names, it’s purely alphabetical." The U.K. indie band’s second album has beefed-up sound (from Pixies producer Gil Norton) and increasingly brilliant, not-at-all-pretentious gems like "Girls Who Play Guitars," "Russian Literature" and "Karaoke Plays." Whether he’s rocking out ("Our Velocity") or breaking down ("Nosebleed"), Smith sings every line like his girlfriend is downstairs loading her boxes of books into her new boyfriend’s car. And if he misses the books more than he misses her, that’s just part of his charm.