Epiphany struck – fell from the clear, blue sky, actually – in the last place you would imagine: Milan, on a drowsy Saturday afternoon.
A young man on a bike swerved towards the pavement at speed; he wore monster headphones and his eyes were shut. The guy, nobody special, was singing, a ragged, heartfelt bray: “What Happens When You Lose Everything?/You Just Start Again/You Start All Over Again”.
He screamed the words, as though in the throes of a religious ecstacy. Leaping out of his path, I felt a dart of jealously that a song could be so precious to someone.
“Our music has a very powerful effect on people” says Maxïmo Park singer Paul Smith when I later tell him of the incident (the lyrics are from their single 'Apply Some Pressure'). “They mean a lot to us and I think when you put passion into your music it strikes a chord.”
An ardent five piece from the north of England, Maxïmo Park have a genuinely anthemic reach, which is to say they articulate the emotions of a mass of people, who, in turn, embrace the group both as idols and kindred.
“We don’t want to waste an audience's time with music that is throwaway or inessential,” says Smith. “Every song we write, every riff and solo, we look at closely and ask ourselves ‘is this vital – can we leave it out?’. There’s no baggage in our songs.”
With his silly comb-over and woodsman’s glare, Smith is the fulcrum of Maxïmo Park. He transmits a volcanic earnestness that has seen one critic dub him, rather adoringly, “a cross between Oscar Wilde, Basil Fawlty and a regional bank clerk undergoing a crisis.”
Words such as ‘cathartic’ are much abused when writing about bands, yet this is precisely the effect of the Maxïmo songbook.
While it is impossible – even offensive – to imagine Kaiser Chiefs or Razorlight changing anyone’s life, Maxïmo Park have an elemental reach.
Smith is aware of this. He feels a responsibility towards his audience; one gets the impression that it weighs down on him, a terrible burden.
“Every time you get up on stage, you’ve got a duty to the people who have come to watch you,” he explains. “I feel that I am articulating the things they feel – that sense of being powerless and alone, and of how you can kick against it, how you can fight it and win.”
Some time before the release of their long play debut, A Certain Trigger, Maxïmo Park picked Warp Records over a scrum of labels bidding for their signature. The choice was, to say the least, unconventional.
Bloody minded patrons of anti-art, Warp (based aptly in post-industrial Sheffield) have nurtured a generation of diffident, difficult musicians – their roster includes such non-stars as Aphex Twin, LFO and Boards Of Canada.
For most of these groups, the guiding philosophy would seem to be that nothing is as beautiful as gilded ugliness. Maxïmo Park, it is fair to claim, stand apart from the avant-noisenik crowd.
“We signed to Warp because they care about the music, and only about the music,” says Smith. “I can’t imagine what sort of band we'd have turned out as had we gone with a label that was thinking only about our career and shifting records. Certainly we wouldn’t be Maxïmo Park.”
Last year, at the Mercury Awards, Smith seemed to flaunt his band’s avant-garde-by-association trappings. From the podium, he reminded those present that, unlike the majority of young guitar-wielding nominees, Maxïmo Park were on an independent label.
“We aren’t entertainers in the vein of Kaiser Chiefs,” Smith states. “Maxïmo Park come from a left-field tradition of post-punk music. We are aware of our heritage and of what we want to say. With our label, the only kind of conversation we’ve ever had with them has been about music.
Business doesn’t come into it. They put out records by bands they believe in and that’s the end of the story. They aren’t looking to turn us into the next Oasis.”
Maxïmo's image as akward outsiders has been assiduously cultivated. Smith dresses like a depression-era mortician; the rest of the group favour dark colours and stark lines: "Style is part of pop music and popular culture. There’s no way of getting around that."
The seething vulnerability that bleeds from the singer like a strange, sad radiation is a by-product of a lonely upbringing in a drab satellite of Newcastle. Smith says that, from an early age, he felt apart.
Other kids were interested in football and chips and girls; he read difficult novels and yearned for things he could not fully express, even to himself.
“Ultimately, all of the songs are about wanting to escape,” he concludes. “It can be hard, growing up in a place where you are mocked for being different, for wanting to read a book when all of the other kids are playing football.
“Eventually, though, you do get out. I went to Newcastle, which is a cosmopolitan city now, and discovered a whole new world. So that’s our message in the end – don’t despair, never stop believing. Things can get better.”