Maximo Park

Now touring with their fourth studio album, it’d be easy to assume that every single member of Maxïmo Park has been living their teenage dream of being in a hugely successful Rock band for the past 12 years. The comical fact is quirky frontman Paul had never even been aware of his vocal talent – or had ever possessed the desire to be in an Indie Rock band – until the other members of the band had spotted him leaping around as part of an instrumental college band and got him to sing. BBM’s Alexandra MacLeod talks to him about the success of the new album ‘The National Health’, tour bus games, and the knack to entertain German tram passengers!

Hi Paul, have you already set off on your next tour?
I’m at home in Newcastle, we’ve been on tour for the past month in America, and we did a show in Spain at the weekend, so this is my week to get reacclimatised before we go back off on tour again on Monday to Lisbon!

How was America for you this time round?
Yeah it was good, we’ve done three or four tours out there, but we didn’t go out there with the last album so it’s been a while since we’ve been back. People were really excited, and kind of hanging around after the shows to chat to us, and things, so I think they were happy to have us back!

You’ve done a lot of travelling with Maxïmo Park, do you have a favourite country to go to?
Well, it’s tricky because everywhere that you go you’ve got to try and make something of it, and I’m glad to say most places have an interest for me. Even in a small town, you can get into that small town mentality and take photos of things you wouldn’t normally take photographs of. But we do tend to play to quite a lot of people in Germany and have been there quite a few times, it’s always nice to be in Berlin. Being in New York recently was, again great, it was such a full-on place. We get the opportunity to see so many things it would rude to single out one!

What about the long journeys in between each destination, how do you keep yourselves entertained on the bus? Card games?
I’m not very good at cards, so I’m not allowed to join in with that. I would just ruin the game! You can look at it two ways, as a waste of time and just go to sleep – which I would advise if you need to catch up on some – but it’s an opportunity to read and to catch up on films you haven’t seen and we’re always talking and swapping our iPods into the bus’ sound system. For us, you know, you find coping mechanisms.

What are you all listening to at the moment? Any particular artists that stand out?
I’ve been listening to an American Indie-Pop band called Diiv, and they’re an off shoot of a band called Beach Bar, and they were recently on tour in America with a band called Wild Nothing who I also really like as well. So that’s been the kind of dreamy stuff, and then I’ve been listening to this lady called Nina Nastisia, which is kind of folky singer that’s quite intimate music, really nice.

What’s the reaction been like for your album ‘The National Health’, have you had a good response?
Yeah I’m glad to say people have really responded to it. Back in June we put the song The National Health on the internet, you know just streaming it online and people were getting a bit crazy about it. Even friends of friends of mine that are quite detached, you know, they’re just your pals. But this friend of mine Neil, who I’ve known pretty much all my life, was texting me going “Heard the song today, really amazing, really excited for you.” And he doesn’t get excited about much, so if Neil’s excited then we must have made a decent stab at it! Above everything the record is fun, but it’s got a lot of frustration and it acknowledges that the world is chaotic, but ultimately it is there to be enjoyed.

You have a particularly unique vocal, had you always dreamt of being in a band?
Definitely not! I’ve always been obsessed with music but I never really wanted to be in band. I didn’t know if I could sing or not, and I sort of took it on a local level, because when you saw all these kids in school joining bands they were always the mouthiest and arrogant, and had the attitude but didn’t have the actual talent. So I used to see people like that and think; “I don’t want to be in a band like that.” In Art College, me and two friends of mine formed an instrumental band, and that’s how Maxïmo Park saw me as a frontman, because when the songs would get a bit more ‘Rocky’ I would sort of jump up and down in this kind of suit, you know, it just wasn’t really what the Post-Rock scene in Newcastle was about, so I stuck out a bit like a sore thumb. They said, “this guy could be a frontman”, and it was only then when I started singing they said, “You’re in tune, we like it, let’s go!”

The video for your new single ‘The Undercurrents’ was filmed on public transport, did you get some odd looks?
It was very awkward because we were in the middle of the tram in Berlin; so we were in the pivot of this bi-sectional tram, and I would kind of jump over for one verse and perform to people in one carriage, and then jump over and kind of make my way through the guitar and the keyboard for another. It was definitely awkward but definitely fun as well. It was our album launch for ‘The National Health’, and very different from anything we’ve done before.

What are the future plans for Maxïmo Park?
Well it’s all dependant on how soon we start writing again, and I know Dunc was playing an amazing riff in soundcheck the other day, you just never know. You just get new material out as and when, but if we’re writing songs we’ll get it recorded next year, and then hopefully out the following year! We’ve always said if the record isn’t right, you know, if for some reason we don’t write enough songs that good enough we won’t put it out because there are too many bands that just churn out records!

By Alexandra Macleod

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