Maximo Park - I Want YouTo Stay

Fri 17th Feb, 2006 in Music Reviews

I’ve said it each time I’ve reviewed a Maximo Park song and I’ll say it again – Paul Smith’s voice is absolutely fantastic. It commands attention and lends a dark, urgent quality to even the most upbeat of tracks.

New single I Want You To Stay (the fourth single off debut album A Certain Trigger) is slower in delivery, with a new wave quality (certainly not unfamiliar territory for Maximo Park) and stop-start feel to the verses. Imbued with electronics, the melancholic nature of the song is encapsulated as Smith sings,

”’Cause nothing works round here
Where cranes collect the sky
I long for the neon signs of night
‘Cause nothing works round here”.

Then suddenly you notice that the song is building in volume and intensity until you are greeted with a wonderful, chaotic cacophony at the end – a perfect change from the calculated, morose restraint of the rest of the song that compliments the closing lyrics:

“As time gets more compressed
You’re always my reminder
You know the way I feel”.

Far from being cheesy, however, it drives home the point that when Maximo Park play their hand at sentiment, it is not in a grab-a-box-of-tissues kind of way. It is direct and sober, and all the more powerful for it.