Delivering an album of angular post-punk anthems and with an energetic frontman who 'read' his lyrics from a book of poetry during live shows, there was no doubting the potential star quality on display.
Debut album A Certain Trigger shifted in excess of half a million copies and tours sold out in the blink of an eye. Now we come to album number two and the chance to build upon their previous successes.



Our Earthly Pleasures certainly wastes no time in setting out its stall, as the opening double-whammy of Girls Who Play Guitars and Our Velocity manage to pack more hooks into their six minutes than some bands can muster in an entire career. Even at this early stage, it is clear that bringing in Gil Norton (Pixies, Jimmy Eat World) to produce was a masterstroke. The serrated edges have been filed down and what is left is a set of streamlined pop songs that pack a huge punch. Books from Boxes finds the band in a more downbeat mood but no less effective - Paul Smith's vocals wrapping themselves around Duncan Lloyd's twinkling guitar in an understated but nagging chorus that suggests it could be a future hit single.
Smith in particular is on top form all through this record, putting in great vocal performances and delivering lyrics that balance on a tightrope between clever and pretentious.
It's the quality of lyrics that sets Maximo Park aside from many of their contemporaries as Smith paints pictures with words ("rain explodes at the moment that the cab door closed") and pens anthemic lines ("the weekend is a godsend, the night time is a lifeline") using a vocabulary that would put most of his peers to shame (I certainly couldn't imagine Johnny Borrell using the words 'codify' or tessellate').
Elsewhere on the album, Karaoke Plays begins quietly before exploding into a rock beast (not quite "Smashing Pumpkins meet The Smiths" as the band claimed in a recent interview, but not too far off) and then settling down into a nursery rhyme style outro while The Unshockable, By the Monument and Nosebleed are three highlights that follow one after the other proving that there was a lot of quality control at play when putting the album together.
This is an LP that shows a band growing and evolving, shaking off any association with a scene that they may have been unfairly bracketed into and just doing what they do best - writing brilliantly catchy and literate pop songs.
Long may they continue.