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