Album Review: Maximo Park - 'Stream Of Life'
Twenty years into their indie mission, Maximo Park find the ‘Stream of Life’ is always changing on their eighth album.
In November 2004, Paul Smith and co launched ‘The Coast Is Always Changing’, the debut single which spearheaded their “so-called career” (by his own admission). Guitarist Duncan Lloyd admits it’s “unusual” for a band like theirs to reach eight albums, but it’s not that surprising: they’ve been ever-presents, in their own way. This is their first outing since 2021’s ‘Nature Always Wins’, which propelled them to #2 in the album charts, matching ‘Our Earthly Pleasures’ in 2007.
Maximo worked remotely with producer Ben Allen for obvious reasons in the pandemic, but this time worked in person in Atlanta, Georgia, turning band demos into forceful ideas.
From the opening guitars of ‘Your Own Worst Enemy’, you’re in comfortable territory, as long as you’re aware of the band. The single is strong, not “that horrible feeling” Paul sings about in the chorus. It develops the musings on fatherhood as the little girl from 2021’s ‘Baby, Sleep’ grows up, sounding a little like ‘Green’-era R.E.M.
Recording in GA allowed the band a chance to make a pilgrimage to Athens, the home of those aforementioned alt icons and countless others. The band honour their heroes in their sound.
Maximo Park have a recurring theme featuring female singers they admire – Low’s Mimi Parker on 2017’s ‘Risk to Exist’, and Penetration’s Pauline Murray on ‘Nature Always Wins’. Allen suggested Vanessa Briscoe Hay from another iconic Athens band, Pylon. She offers a stark contrast on ‘Dormant ‘Til Explosion’ from the outset - a difference of age, and a unique accent – which comes to a head as they trade lines in the second verse.
It is sandwiched between ‘Favourite Songs’, a classic Maximo track with a soaring chorus, and ‘The End Can Be As Good As The Start’, which muses on philosophy and reality with the line: “Did you find yourself in me? ‘Cause I found myself in you.”
Side A is completed with ‘Armchair View’, a calmer, more reflective piece which shows another side of the band’s many facets, with a finger-picking style, not a rock performance.
‘Quiz Show Clue’ is similarly melancholic, and almost psychedelic, musing on another existential crisis: “I don’t exist, and nor do you, we’re just a footnote now, a quiz show clue.” It builds to a climax of euphoric repeated lyrics of “I got carried, I got carried away”.
The album title nods to Maximo’s high-brow nature. Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, who died 15 months before frontman Paul Smith was born, wrote experimental novel ‘Água Viva’. It literally means “living water”, but the English translation became ‘Stream of Life’. Maximo’s version is a tale of misunderstandings, and the eternal battle about what we want from life: “When you get the thing you want, but it's not the thing you need, you disrupt the stream of life, and the restlessness impedes."
There’s always familiar territory around the corner, whether it’s the “piles of books” (sans Boxes) in the beautiful ‘Doppelganger Eyes’, the catchy ‘I Knew That You’d Say That’ that is reminiscent of debut ‘A Certain Trigger’, or twisting the “no man is an island” cliche in ‘The Path I Chose’.
Final song ‘No Such Thing As A Society’ was penned by a reflective Paul upon walking the bridge connecting Newcastle and Gateshead. It harks back to a Margaret Thatcher quote from 1987. It’s musically upbeat, but lyrically bleak, a song about defying the concept of every man for himself. It’s not the first time Maximo have “got political”, but you can see where the preachers sneaked into the park off the junction with Manic Street.
Maximo Park always rail against complacency. I expect they will never settle. ‘Stream of Life’ marries lyrics with depth, height and heart to driving pop songs. It’s the Newcastle band’s ethos.
Their devotion to the acts they loved is clear. For the Park’s own diehard fans, they will be rewarded on the road. The studio versions of these new songs are primed for the stage. They have that performance-style already wrapped up in them.
Maximo Park are not stuck in the past, but rather they’re propelled by it – whether it’s experimental writing from the 70s or controversial political quotes from the 80s. ‘Stream of Life’ is a document of where they are now, in North-East England, with all the complexity and creativity we’ve come to expect. It’s about the philosophy of how to pass the time, and how it passes away anyway. That’s what I’ll take away from it anyhow.
Paul Smith admits that singing “my best years are behind me” during ‘Favourite Songs’ “is meant to be funny”, and it doesn’t feel like a risk. It doesn’t ring true in the music of ‘Stream of Life’. It’s classic Maximo Park, whether that’s coasts, streams, or any other source of H2O.
Words by Samuel Draper
