kaliha | Review: Maximo Park, Civic Hall, Wolverhampton

On Wednesday me and His Lordship headed off to the wilds of Wolverhampton to go and See Maximo Park at the Civic. It's been ages since I've been to the Civic and again it was to a gig where we were only able to get standing tickets not seats up in the balcony. Which is a shame, because the sound is so much better upstairs.

It's one of our complaints of the Civic, the bass drum and guitar are always much to loud. God only knows what the sound tech at the Civic does all day, but it isn't getting the levels right. I think ,the last gig I went to at the Civic that has good sound levels was Muse and that was years ago. The bass was so throbbing it was making the flesh of my nostrils vibrate and it felt horrible. But enough of my whinging and back to the gig.

The place was absolutely packed. Definitely a sold-out show. I don't know who the support band were but they didn't sound very good (again, sound levels). Maximo Park themselves didn't come out until about 9.30ish. Which is quite late for a main act at the Civic.

We soon found out why though, poor Paul Smith has food poisoning. Not that you'd be able to tell the way he was throwing himself around the stage and it certainly didn't affect his singing (not until Our Velocity anyway, but more on that later). He said that he didn't want to cancel the gig because he didn't want to let everyone down.

(He's a very polite young man, saying thank you at the end of every song. You don't get that much nowadays.)

He was saying in a break between two of the songs that he and the band went to the Academy in Birmingham the night before to see Underworld (I didn't even realise they were still going) and he was saying that on the train (TRAIN!) on the way back he met two of the nicest Wolverhampton locals, yay them for giving Wolves a good name (because God only knows most of the others don't).

There was some definite moshing down the front during Apply some Pressure. I used the bouncing around to shove the annoyingly tall bloke in front of me a few steps further forward as he kept stepping back and trampling me and there's only so much of that I'll take before I get my elbows out and start bouncing.

They changed Books from Boxes a little bit, which His Lordship didn't like at all, but I thought was rather cool. Karaoke Plays was really good, probably my favourite of the night.

Partway through Our Velocity Paul Smith vanished. Well, not vanished but disappeared off stage and stopped singing. Luckily it was the bit that everyone knew so the crowd started blasting out the worlds. Every so often he'd join in from off stage.

Then he reappeared and finished the song. He then apologised profusely especially to the people on the front few rows who'd seen him being sick on the side of the stage. Poor lad.

Wolverhampton: Makes Lead Singers in Bands Ill. Fact.

Our velocity was the last song of the main set, but they then came on to do three further songs, Russian Literature, Acrobat and Graffiti, if I remember rightly.

All it all it was a very good night. Hoorah for Maximo Park.

8/10
View of the stage 7/10 (could see them most of the time, which makes a real change)