Apply Some Pressure

Maximo Park @ Bowery Ballroom 9/25/05
Openers Cloud Room were an ok UK band who at times reminded me of Franz Ferdinand, but otherwise didn't do much for me. I'll also say that I confuse them with Cloud Cult sometimes.

It was nice to see Maximo Park jumping in popularity from 2 sold-out nights at Tonic back in June to a sold-out gig at Bowery Ballroom in just a few short months. Their set was very similar to the one I saw at Tonic back in June. It covered all of their excellent debut album A Certain Trigger except for one song as well as a B-side ("Fear of Falling") and a few newer tracks, including one recently recorded for the War Child compilation. Again, the energy and enthusiasm of this band is boundless, as is their ability to write hooky, anthemic, heart-on-sleeve, early '80s inspired songs like "Going Missing" (the most recent single in the UK to become a well-deserved hit), "I Want You to Stay", "Limassol" (whatever that is) and others. If I have one complaint, and it's a minor one, but I really wish that keyboardist Lukas would stop doing those cheesy karate/kung-fu moves. It's really played out. Then again, it did let me practive my taekwondo moves after the show as I was making fun of him (in good fun, of course). During the encore, Lukas' keyboard broke, so they had to play "Going Missing" and their last song as a 4-piece and you know what, they still sounded great though the keyboard parts were obviously missed. Regardless, I highly recommend seeing this band if they come anywhere near you. They're fantastic and much better than the constant comparisons they get to other, more established UK bands playing this style of music.

As a final note, me and the girlfriend defintely had slightly different accounts of this show. I think she preferred Cloud Room. You can read her account of the show(as well as others shows including the Roots/TV On the Radio/Deerhoof bill that we saw a few weeks ago) here.

PREVIOUSLY: My review of Maximo Park @ Tonic back in June.

Thanks to Andrew Kendall for letting me use this picture.