Maximo Park interview: Paul Smith on pushing sonic boundaries with enthralling new album Nature Always Wins

Published date25 January 2021
Publication titleDaily Star: Web Edition Articles (England)
Armed with new 15-20 songs, Ben Allen, their would-be producer, laid down the challenge to the Newcastle indie heroes. The Atlanta-based, Grammy Award-winning whizz gave them the daunting task of hitting 40 tracks.

It was one the Mercury Prize-nominees embraced. They invited Allen to their north east hometown at the beginning of 2020 for a trip to soak up the culture. They took in the sights, from the fleamarket to the quayside, before stopping off for a curry – sealing the deal for him to become Maxïmo Park’s “fourth member” in the process. Led by frontman Paul Smith, they got to work on even more new songs that would form their seventh studio album Nature Always Wins, out on February 26 via Prolifica.

“We thought this guy had thrown the gauntlet down”, Smith told Daily Star Online. “It pushed us to writing more songs and you end up with more songs to choose from.

“You can get the diversity you want from the record and hopefully you will get a better calibre of song, even though we tend to hold great stock in the art of songwriting. We try and craft songs that are timeless and built to last. We pushed ourselves a bit further.”

They were due to fly out to Atlanta to work in Allen’s studio but the pandemic threw a spanner in the works. It meant Nature Always Wins was recorded and produced remotely.

But Maxïmo Park remained unfazed by a the transatlantic hurdle that stood in their way.

Nature Always Wins is an ambitious and sublime landmark for Maxïmo Park. While their thrilling, “quintessential Maxïmo” punky hooks are still there on songs like the dizzyingly catchy single Baby Sleep, Ardour and I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, they’ve embraced an alluring sonic enchantment boosted by Allen’s work producing Deerhunter, Animal Collective and Gnarls Barkley.

Rousing synths are layered over Placeholder, All Of Me, and Feelings I’m Supposed To Feel, but the real shift is seen in atmospheric album closer Child Of The Flatlands, which Smith describes as “one of the best things we’ve ever done”.

Lyrically, Smith is as bold and inquisitive as ever. Here he tackles themes inspired by the anxiety of newfound fatherhood, the brutal realities of disaster and terrorism, and the treatment of ethnic minority groups among a stunning cluster of expertly researched and universally relatable songs about the everyday.

“It feels like all of our songs there is a life goes on light at the end of the tunnel aspect of all of them”, Smith adds. “Whether it’s Apply Some Pressure where it says ‘what happens when you lose everything You just start again’. Having people hear those things in songs is a powerful thing – especially for me. I only speak as a music fan really, most of the time. When I’m looking for what I love in a song, it is often those everyday things, everyday statements you maybe don’t hear in a song all the time."

He added: "I’m more relaxed as a songwriter. We take more chances, especially on this record."

Daily Star Online’s Rory McKeown caught up with Smith to talk about Nature Always Wins' creation, its themes, working with Ben Allen, becoming a dad, and Maxïmo Park’s evolution since 2005’s A Certain Trigger.

Hi Paul. How would you describe the past year for Maxïmo Park How have you dealt with any challenges that may have arisen from the weirdness of 2020

“It’s been not one we would have liked. We were due to go to Atlanta to record the record just before lockdown started. We started to try and find a different way of doing it. Luckily Ben Allen, the producer, was happy to do it long distance and see how the processed worked.

“We were geared up to go to the other side of the world. We were pretty excited about recording. That was one big thing I can definitely say was a disruption.

“But in terms of every day kind of stuff, it has in someways been very normal. I work from home, I make my own solo records at home. Making music at home wasn’t that unusual, to be recording a vocal and sending it off to somebody. I do that because that’s my break from the collaborative excitement you get when you’re away somewhere with your pals making music.

“It was slightly annoying in that respect but loads of other people have lost jobs or can’t go into work. I feel fairly self-sufficient at home. I can read, write and try and process what’s going on at home.

“My four-year-old daughter started school in this time, which is a bit of a shift in everybody’s mental states and schedules. All the daily things have started to pile up and it definitely feels like we all need a bit of a release. Like going out to the shops, things like that didn’t bother me too much.

“Now it’s that idea of contact with people, that kind of freedom you have to go to places, I feel like I’ve been trying to be as responsible as possible in limiting all the contacts I’ve been having. You do feel under pressure to do right thing, even though you’ve been left a bit to make your own mind up in that respect.”

You’re about to release your seventh album Nature Always Wins. Tell me about its writing and recording process. When did these songs start forming

“Our keyboard player Lukas Wooller left the band. He emigrated and started a family in Australia. We knew that was on the cards and we didn’t start writing until he’d gone. We were having a re-learning of how to write songs after you go on the road for a while. After Risk to Exist was out, we went out for the best part of the year doing festivals. After that you want to get back to trying to find some inspiration rather than churning something out. We’re not that kind of band. Every bit of music we put out has to mean something to us. We’re pretty stringent on that. There’s plenty of disposable music out there and we don’t want to be part of that.

“You come back and try and reset in some normal life and try and find things to write about, do research, listen to a lot of music that excites you to try and recharge your musical batteries. Me and Duncan Lloyd both make solo music. That gives you a different kind of outlet, artistically speaking. We felt like ‘OK, Lukas is going to leave. Let’s try and think about what that means to the way we write songs’. He would chip in every now and then with a song but it’s basically me and Duncan who write all the songs together.

“Lukas’ keyboards are a big part of the sound of all of our other records, up until this one. We’re not just a chuggy guitar band, of which there are many. We try to think how we’re going to keep going with keyboards, it was definitely important to us.

“Duncan wrote a few songs on piano and did a bit of synth on some of the demos. We thought we were going to try and not just fill the gap entirely, but we did want someone who could play the keyboards. We thought ‘right, we need a producer who’s a musician and who can play a bit of bass, a bit of keyboards, and anything else they think is applicable to the songs’.

“That’s when we thought of Ben Allen. We’d looked at him for a few of our records when we were making decisions about who we might approach...

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