Too Much Information

This record is closer to business as usual: leader Paul Smith's lyrics portray him as the bookish romantic stymied by constantly overthinking--but, this time, the sound has been subtly enhanced by electronics and actual beats.

Too Much Information has just the right balance of depth, maturity and consistency to ensure success. [Mar 2014, p.93]

Given its experimental beginnings, Too Much Information might not be the band's most immediate album, but it affords them more possibilities than they've had since their debut.

Smith's lyrical flights of fancy come off somewhat top-heavy, but by and large such bookish pretentions feel like something to appreciate, not castigate. [Mar 2014, p.79]

It's not the best music of its kind available, no. But for Maxïmo Park fans, this will succeed in becoming a vital notch in their canon, and for non-fans, it at least worth a spin or two.

This fifth album resolutely refuses to tread water, instead coming on like a literary pop version of The Maccabees’ recent explorations in jittery psychedelia.

In the past, the absence of an edifyingly crowd-pleasing anthem like that from a Maximo Park album might have signaled a less-than-essential entry in the band's discography; in its place, however, resides a tonal consistency and musical flow not found since A Certain Trigger.

While this fifth album contains icier, rather Fever Ray inspired electronic soundscapes, frontman Paul Smith’s eccentric tales of nocturnal sports and deceased poets are mostly backed by the angular pop production fans of this band have come to expect.

It's neither forward looking nor, overtly retro or especially of the moment--it just is, in the best sense.

As a literary exercise, it’s convincing; as a listening one, it’s mixed.

Here, the North-east new-wave revivalists refresh their default angular moves with nervy propulsion (“Give, Get, Take”), elegant synth-pop (“Brain Cells”) and electro-glide reflections (“Is it True?”).

Too Much Information sounds more like a collection of tracks from different moments in their career than a fully cohesive whole but perhaps this isn’t such a bad thing.

There are a lot of words in this, their fifth album, and yes, they have always been a literate band, but here it often seems somewhat forced.

It can be straightforward, but more often than not on Too Much Information it’s actually quite clever.

In Too Much Information, they’ve made easily the most interesting and eclectic album of their career--they just didn’t quite include enough of those heartwarming hooks to make it their best.

The album feels like a grab-bag of the band’s process, but not a cohesive expression of their craft.

Maximo’s strength has always been in scorching post-punk anthems (“Our Velocity”, “Graffiti”) and hyper-literate melancholic balladry (“Acrobat”, “This Is What Becomes of the Broken Hearted”), which work so well when bolstered by Paul Smith’s erudite lyrics and uniquely accented delivery. They pull off the former on “My Bloody Mind” and the latter on the excellent “Leave This Island”, but elsewhere the hooks and melodies rarely match the frontman’s grasping literary pretensions.

The overhaul, surely, needed to be much more far-reaching. [Mar 2014, p.88]

The problem is that there is too little to dig into, to revel in. In many senses, Too Much Information is ultimately not enough. [Feb/Mar 2014, p.73]

The music struggles to match the lyrical focus, sounding piecemeal and haphazard.