Obscurer With Paul Smith

Look who’s back/leaving…

Hi fans!

Sadly, this will be my last column for the fine blogular establishment we’ve come to know and love as hip young gunslinger. I’m being shipped out in favour of a new reminscifeature which is starting soon. It doesn’t bother me though, because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed telling you all about my favourite old records, and anyway, there are new Maximo Park albums to get on with and write!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The last song I intend to tell you about is ‘Forgive’ by Burial. It seems fitting, because listening to this stunning piece of audio music always makes me reflect about endings and sad partings and that bit in Doctor Who when Rose was on the beach and David Tennant wanted to say he loved her but she disappeared and he didn’t have a chance.

You may not know this, but ‘Forgive’ is actually the result of Mr. Burial applying a load of filters to the track ‘Girls’ by Death In Vegas, which is the wishy-washy one they always use to advertise Wales or Ireland or whatever.

The extra studio fuckery gives things a far more harrowing reading, and makes you think less of Dervla Kirwan and more about getting the nightbus home in the pouring rain, pilled off your bonce and full of warm feelings for the pisshead who keeps falling off his chair.

I would heartily recommend you seek out ‘Forgive’ (via legal means, musiclovers!!!!!!) and play it repeatedly until your heart and brain both melt. Then go out and buy a Maximo Park album, and see the similar levels of sonic bravery we bring to the industry.

Peace and love to you all.
PAUL.

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Obscurer with Paul Smith

Hi fans!

I realise a lot of my recent columns have been a bit ‘Paul-centric’ so for this week’s trip down memory lane I am going to keep myself well out of it and just go on about the tune.

This week’s Obscurer track is ‘Private Party’ by Bobby Nunn. Way back in the day, before the standard response became a smack in the face, one could stroll into a record emporium, bark “Funk!” at the attendant and expect to be handed several of Bobby’s fine vinyls. This is the best.

A taut mass of bass and synth, ‘Private Party’ exemplifies a style of music from which, amongst others, Beck Hansen (aka Beck) would later draw inspiration for his 1999 party funk odyssey, ’Midnite Vultures’. In its high-pitched synth stabs and lyrical invitations to a ‘private party…just me and you’ one can also hear the tune’s influence on Chromeo, in particular their fantastic track ‘Fancy Footwork’.

Ultimately, Maximo Park is a funk band. We take just as much inspiration from the party spirit embedded within each of these records as we do the dark desolation at the heart of, say, Joy Division’s work. This causes some schizophrenia. In partying terms, we are a bit like the person who dances for half an hour before sitting in the corner crying for ages.

At the end of ‘Private Party’, a woman starts to make a sound that is a bit like crying, but not quite. It isn’t really a laugh either, although it’s close. Whatever she is doing, I have never heard a woman make that noise, and because it was in the past, we may never know what was wrong with her. How depressing.

Bye kids!

Paul
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Obscurer with Paul Smith

Hi fans!

Today I would like to talk about Mark Ronson’s last album. More specifically I would like to address the fact that he has chosen to release Amy Winehouse’s, version* of ‘Valerie’, rather than my version** of ‘Apply Some Pressure’, the world-conquering Maximo Park song that was so good I had to cover it myself.

A lot of people have asked me if I mind being snubbed like this, especially since my track is one of the best - if not the actual best - on the album. The answer is………….. NO! I totally do not mind that Mark is not using my track as a single, for me it was always more of an experiment anyway.

When I first had the idea of covering my own song, Mark was unsure. I had to track him down through his record company and ring him at home. I don’t think he was very happy about that but after half an hour of explaining who Maximo Park was and who I was he seemed to warm a little. I told him that I’d heard he was doing a covers album, and explained that I’d like to do one of my own, if that was okay.

This was because I am a naturally subversive person - example: the other day, I asked an old lady if I could have her seat on the bus - and I wanted to freak people out. I also had a small wager with one of my friends that I could get a little ‘double whammy’ going on with the writing and performance royalties.

Anyway, it all worked out perfectly and my song is available on all good copies of Mark Ronson’s fantastic covers album, ‘Version’.***

The reason I am not bothered about Amy Winehouse getting the single and not me is because I have poetry in my life - she only has drugs. Think about that.

Today’s Obscurer track is ‘Apply Some Pressure’ by Mark Ronson.

Thanks all, peace out!

Paul
X


*Now I understand why Mark called the album ’Version’.

**It’s quite clever, isn’t it?

***Not so much the third time.

Obscurer with Paul Smith!

He's back!

Hi fans!

I bet you’re glad to see me back (and relieved!) but in reality there was never any chance of me giving up this column so easily. I just found that review so hurtful that I felt it appropriate to withdraw from public life for a while. I’ve been living in Gateshead, on that bridge where all the naked people were. To be honest it’s been fucking freezing, so I’m glad to be back.

Anyway, today’s old record is ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ by Bonnie and Shelia. The track is a horns ‘n’ organs funk classic that encapsulates what it feels like to be in love, but from a slightly stalker-ish perspective. It is not really made clear whether the object of Bonnie and Sheila’s desire is an amazing bastard who never calls, or a complete stranger that the two of them have seen somewhere, possibly in a bar, or on a ‘sidewalk’, and fallen in love with.

It reminds me of the time I was kept hanging on, by BT, who had me at a payphone for 40 minutes and still weren’t able to solve my problem. I wanted to get my phone connected so I could get broadband in my flat, but the guy was like, “you’ve got to pay £150”, or something, and I’m like, “I doubt it mate, not just to flick a switch at the exchange” and he’s going, “can you hold on for a moment”, while he goes off to check something, so I’m sat there listening to some random Pavarotti (rest in peace by the way) track, which was quite good but not helping me get broadband, and then the guy comes back with, “I’ve checked and the price I’ve given you is the correct one”, and I say, “well can you check again, is there anyone you can speak to, because I’m not paying that - not just to have somebody switch my phone line on”, and he goes off again, and it went on like that for about 40 minutes I was VERY UNHAPPY.

See you next time kids.

Paul
x

Someone isn't happy...

Hello Fans,

This week I was going to write my 500 words about ‘The Bouncer’ by Kicks Like A Mule, but I have been so upset by something that I literally died. I literally died, inside. All my positivism is shot to pieces and I don’t even know if I can carry on with the column any more - my love of music has been that badly affected.

Do you want to know what upset me so much?

This:

"Do you know the tracks that just go over your head, and by the end of the song you realise you didn’t take even the slightest bit of it in? Well, ‘Girls Who Play Guitars’ is exactly one of those. While this spasmodic guitar dirge is playing on the stereo in the background, we start imagining how cool it would be to have telekinetic powers strong enough to fire a custard pie filled with cyanide straight at Paul Smith’s gob. “We used to talk about girls who play guitars/We used to talk about plans in tiny bars”. Splat! We can but dream".

That is the NME said about my band’s new single.

:(

Apart from being factually wrong and shoddily written that review is heartbreaking because it takes a piece of art that I spent seven years of my life bringing into the world and dismisses it out of hand, as if it doesn’t matter.

OF COURSE the song will go over your head if you listen to it on a STEREO!

Maximo Park makes music for headphones.

Spasmodic guitar dirge? GWPG is one of our best compositions! Our manager even said so, and I'm sure I heard Edith Bowman tell someone she liked it.

I won't even dignify their desire to MURDER ME with a response.

And who is this ’we’, Mr. Jamie Crosslan (for it is he who authored the above savaging)? ’We’ start imagining? ’We can but dream’? Collectively? I think not. Using ’we’ to describe oneself is the sort of thing pretentious bloggers do and I cannot abide by it. ‘We’ indeed.

As I say the whole thing has left me very upset and I am still unsure as to whether I will be able to continue being positive enough about life in general, let alone music, to carry on writing a column about my favourite old records.

With that I bid you a saddened good day.

Paul
x

Look who it is!

Hi fans! Sorry for being away so long, this is because Maximo Park has been all around the world playing to billions of people at festivals! Festivals are amazing, because unlike normal gigs, they are OUTDOORS.

What’s all the fuss, I hear you say? Surely that just makes them freezing cold with shit sound and grass. Well, yes. But it also gives you the opportunity to connect with thousands of people at once. Like at Glastonbury 1997 when Thom Yorke got them to turn the lights off so he could see the crowd - he was connecting then, with THOUSANDS of people.

I’ve connected with many people this summer. True, a lot of them have chosen to ‘connect’ with me via the medium of the piss-filled missile (usually a bottle, although there have been some water bombs) but that is just down to festival hi-jinks! I know, in that moment, as a stranger’s urine runs down the back of my neck, that I’ve really connected with them. Really made them feel something about my music.

Anyway, an old track that I’ve been feeling things about recently is ‘He’s A Rebel’ by The Crystals. It’s an old girl group song, with plinky piano, horns, and lyrics about a boy - just like all the best girl group songs. I like to listen to it on my ipod as I walk down the street and pretend they are singing about me.

‘He’s a rebel ‘cos he
Never ever does what he should
But just because he doesn’t do what everybody else does
That’s no reason we can’t share love’

That’s right, fans, just like the boy in the song, Paul Smith is uniquely dangerous, but loved by all the girls. I often whistle along and do a little skip when the song comes on my ipod.

I have heard that some young people are trying now to emulate the old sound of these girl groups, including Amy Winehouse and ‘The Pipettes’. I haven’t heard any songs by these people, but I can’t imagine them being any good.

I don’t see the point in rehashing old sounds. In an ideal world, all bands would be innovative, dangerous and FUTURISTIC - just like Maximo Park.

Bye for now, pop pickers.

Paul

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Obscurer with Paul Smith*

Time now for the latest in our series where Paul 'The People's Frontman' Smith talks about his favourite classic records.

But before that, he's got something to get off his chest...


"Hi fans! Apologies for the brusque opening to my last column, it just annoys me when folk question my intellectuality. My least favourite question in the whole world is, “Do you understand?” Of course I understand! I am Paul Smith, after all. I understand everything!

Anyway, the song I am going to write about today is ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division. If you’re not an emotionally-ruined puddle of tears after hearing this song you must lack either a heart or functioning ears. One of the two. My favourite version of the track, and the one I urge you to seek out, is one the band recorded for John Peel. It is available on Joy Division’s compact disc ’The Complete BBC Recordings’.

From the urgent opening, where clanging guitars and angry drums launch an assault on the listener, to the soaring, heartbreaking synths that propel the chorus into stratospheric realms, this is an aurally-amazing recording. It is orally amazing to, as Ian Curtis gives one of his most controlled live performances.

The last two seconds sound a bit like the guitar noise out of that Placebo song ’Pure Morning’, but don’t hold that against it; Brian Molko probably nicked it. The song's still really good; check it out!".



*in no way associated with Paul Smith or Maximo Park

Obscurer with Paul Smith*

Hello, Paul Smith; tell us some more about your favourite old records!


“It’s been pointed out that in my last column I erroneously used the word metaphor while I was of course talking about a simile. This might seem like a mistake but it wasn’t, I was just doing what Maximo Park always do - fucking with your minds. It definitely was not a mistake. You can tell it wasn’t a mistake because I used the word ’erroneously’ in the first line of this column, and do you think I’d be able to do that if I didn’t know the difference between a metaphor and a simile? No. End of.

This week’s record is ’Room In Your Heart’ by Living In A Box.

For years I thought this song was called ’Living In A Box Room In Your Heart’, because that’s what it said on the tape my sister gave me. I thought it was about being confined to an emotional space the size of a small guest bedroom, but inside somebody’s heart, because they don’t care that much about you any more. I wrote a reply track (years before they got popular) called ‘Moving Back Into The Master Bedroom Of Your Heart’ but I never recorded it.

You might think this - a sugary ballad - is a strange choice for this column, but I feel everyone should be able to identify with the heartfelt emotion at the heart of the track. And also, it’s important to point out that Maximo Park is essentially a boy band, when you strip everything else away.”


Thanks Paul!



*Not in any way associated with Paul Smith or Maximo Park

Obscurer with Paul Smith*

Paul Smith has heard a lot of music. He’s listened to more records than you’ve had hot meals, even if you’re obese. We decided to harness his encyclopaedic powers in a new series, where the Maximo Park singer tells us about some of his favourite music.




#3: Sally Shapiro - ‘I’ll Be By Your Side’



“I feel it’s important to point out that Maximo Park is basically an electro band. We may use guitars and real drums and sound like an indie band, but at our heart we are as electronic as a toaster. This is what qualifies me to talk about this record. It is amazing. A piece of gigantic, glacial electropop that to my ear sounds like listening to Kraftwerk while speeding through the arctic tundra on a snowmobile. By that I don’t mean, ‘quite German and full of engine noise’, I’m using metaphor. Again, this is something Maximo Park like to do quite a lot of and why you should always search for hidden meanings in our songs. Metaphor - look it up, kids!”







*not in any way associated with Paul Smith or Maximo Park

Obscurer with Paul Smith*

Paul Smith has heard a lot of music. He’s listened to more records than you’ve had hot meals, even if you’re obese. We decided to harness his encyclopaedic powers in a new series, where the Maximo Park singer tells us about some of his favourite music.

#2 - ‘Hettakorii No Ottokotou’ by eX-Girl

“This is an amazing record by a brilliant female synth-rock sort of band. To mention any kind of genre in relation to eX-Girl is a bit difficult, since there’re more different genres contained in this one song than there are on most record label rosters. The song is like a five-minute mini-opera, I can never tell if there’s a story because most of the lyrics are in Japanese and I always forget to listen to the English bit. The music is just insane, intense experimentalism. Constantly trying new things and moving in different directions. Just like Maximo Park, except we’re not Japanese!”




Thanks, Paul!






*not in any way associated with Paul Smith or Maximo Park

Obscurer with Paul Smith*

Paul Smith has heard a lot of music. He’s listened to more records than you’ve had hot meals, even if you’re obese. We decided to harness his encyclopaedic powers in a new series, where the Maximo Park singer tells us about some of his favourite music.

#1 - ‘El Es Gay’ by Yo La Tengo

“This is an amazing track, full of spiky guitars and thrashy drum-sounds. It’s an instrumental, but if it had lyrics they’d probably be brilliant. The angularity of sound in this record is fierce; I once cut an inch-long gash on my left hand using the middle eight. I like it when Maximo Park uses these kind of harsh, sharp sounds in songs. To be honest we’re a punk band. The way this song undulates and loops says a lot to me about the reality of being in a band, and also about the conveyer-belt nature of the human race’s myopic 21st century condition. I also like how the title looks like the Spanish for ‘HE IS GAY‘; that one always raises a smile.”

Thanks, Paul!

You’ll be able to read more about Paul Smith’s favourite records soon.

*not in any way associated with Paul Smith or Maximo Park