Maxïmo Park – A Certain Trigger (2005)

If there's one musical style that defines the mid-00's, it's this kind of indie rock that got its influences both from the 90's brit pop and from 80's post-punk and new wave. Maxïmo Park is one of the most typical bands from this era. Their songs have catchy melodies, strange rhythm changes and punk attitude. I was never a huge fan of this band back in the day when they released their first albums. Only later on, I discovered them on a Indie Rock compilation I bought from London in 2010. I still don't have any strong feelings about this band, but I think this band's significance is apparent now years later when we look back at the mid-00's. Britain was filled with bands like this, but Maxïmo Park has stood the time better than many others. This debut album of this Newcastle based indie rock band unfortunately stayed as their best work they ever made.



The most striking feature of this band is the strong Northern accent. I feel like the mid-00's was a perfect time to be making music with a strong accent. Bands like Franz Ferdinand and The Libertines were paving the way for strong British accents in rock music. Of course already the Britpop had done this for the most part, but I feel like the difference was even greater in this phase. Back in the day, many British bands were trying to phase out their accent and sound like some of their American idols.

The album cover is quite stylish. It reminds me of old communist posters from Soviet Union. Of course, using the umlaut in the letter 'i' in the band name is quite pretentious and I really don't know why they have chosen to use that. Although, to be fair, I don't really know what Maxïmo refers to, so please correct me if I'm just misinformed.

The song I first heard from this album was Apply Some Pressure. This was the song on my compilation as well. The music video for this song shows quite clearly the style of these kinds of bands. I don't know if it was the influence of the original 80's post punk era and Joy Division, but most of the bands wore ties and the colours were always red, white and black. The music video also shows that the band was very ambitious from the beginning. Quite a lot of money has gone into making a video like that.

It's difficult to highlight any songs in particular, because most of the songs sound quite similar. Steady rock drumming, fast rhythm guitars and aggressive vocals with strong Newcastle accent. Limassol is probably the only song that differs from this pattern a bit, because they're using some electronic synthesiser sound in the beginning. The rest of the song though is quite similar to other songs.

I feel like Maxïmo Park is perfect music to play in an indie disco. This was the kind of music that all the early hipsters danced the night away to in sweaty clubs. Most of the songs have great rhythm for dancing.

I bought this CD with £1 from a record store here in London. This tells that I'm not very passionate about this band, but I felt like I wanted to own this album as a somewhat of a classic record and when the price was right, I really wanted it. I rarely listen to it at home, but whenever I do, I do like it.

Listen to the album on Spotify.