There’s nothing complicated or even particularly sophisticated about the latest single from Geordie Nation standard bearers, Maximo Park. As Paul Smith sings in the chorus: “We used to talk about girls who play guitars, we used to talk about bands in tiny bars.” Except this is but one of a multitude of choruses.

Gently subversive, Smith has taken to reading out loud from a book at concerts. In a recent interview, he elaborated on the Maximo Park sound: “We like our classic [song] structures and, um ... we like to destroy them, in some ways; send people up the garden path and put about five choruses into one song. But, y'know, they're still pop songs with melodies.”

(4/5)