Are those hippies on the cover? I was all set to give this album a good review, but I can't be seen to be supporting the hippification of society. Instead I'll write an ambiguous review which you'd be hard-pressed to know was even tangentially related to music - like normal.
So what are Maximo Park's earthly pleasures? 'Girls Who Play Guitars' are one, apparently. I'm not quite sure why this is. Girls can be decent guitarists, but they don't have that autistic part of the brain required to do the same thing over and over again. And then again. And again.
Great guitarists have this. They use it to not get distracted by the outside world while they're perfecting their hammer-ons. Great guitarists, despite their outward cool, are actually colossal nerds. Nerds are the best at everything. Nerdiness is a skill.
Maximo Park also claim to love 'Russian Literature'. If this isn't a lie, I don't know what is. People only read Russian literature so that they can say: 'What am I doing in this crappy job? I've read Dostoevsky for Christ's sake', as if having read Dostoevsky is a skill in some way equal to being a nerd.
Next on Maximo Park's love-list are 'Parisian Skies'. Parisian skies are actually pretty crappy and grey. It's a myth that all of France is a land of constant sunshine. Just because somewhere receives more sunshine hours than Matlock, doesn't make it sunny.
There's a song called 'Nosebleed' as well. Maybe they like inflicting them on nerds who question the worth of their time spent reading Crime and Punishment in Paris with their guitarist girlfriends.
I'm not saying that they're walking to the shops themselves and handing over a crumpled ten pound note in exchange for the UK's traditional beverage, no, they're getting a Maximo Park brew made for them.