It has a pace that teases the listener. Synthesizers and rhythmic guitars careen from the speakers like a runaway train, but just before the whole song derails, just when you feel like the energy is about to combust, suddenly the guitar is arpeggiating, slowing down to concentrate on a single chord change, leaving you a few seconds to catch your breath before charging back to breakneck speed. On A Certain Trigger, Maximo Park are the UK’s newest kings of the catchy chorus and the mesmerizing bridge.
A bridge is the movement in the middle of a song that is unique and separate from the verse and chorus, which flavors a tune and breaks the A, B, A, B pattern of songwriting, and on songs such as “Apply Some Pressure” they bravely use it twice like an extra chorus. Their songs are mini-symphonies of rock with movements instead of verses.
Maximo Park’s debut, which married the best beats from British-accented 60s dance pop to trance inducing fuzzy guitars and an effects-laden nasal English tenor whose bouncy melodies are New Wave incarnate with an upbeat twist struck a chord (literally) with British and American audiences alike. The instant success of the Newcastle upon Tyne quartet’s solid, danceable album sparked them to release a companion album of B-sides and demo versions in the same year and it landed them a spot covering the John Lennon song “Isolation” for the Q magazine compilation Lennon Covered alongside music giants like Madonna and Oasis.
With the release of a DVD on the horizon before even a sophomore album, a US tour can’t be far behind…
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