Maximo Park today unveiled their new song All Of Me, the fourth single from their upcoming album Nature Always Wins which hits shelves on February 26th. Aptly described by the Newcastle rockers themselves as a “big pop song“, the new track is turbo-powered by a soaring, melodic chorus and a typically impassioned vocal from frontman Paul Smith.
In a YouTube Q&A session with fans introducing the song, Smith said “We wanted to release ‘All Of Me’ now as it’s an uplifting, catchy big single and a big pop song. We thought it would be a good way to kick off the album.” The singer also suggested that the video location (Hulme in Greater Manchester) was chosen to allude to the deterioration of the post-war consensus on housing and the welfare state, a theme that has cropped in the band’s work over the last decade. Smith said “I’ve been reading this book called ‘Municipal Dreams’ about council housing and how various different governments have tried to house people and look after them, or not. There used to be these places called Crescents in Hulme, a really interesting housing estate, but things didn’t go well and it get demolished. So I was quite interested to go there and film our video.”
Early indications from the band suggest that Nature Always Wins will maintain some of the political energy of its 2017 predecessor Risk To Exist – albeit in a less overt, and perhaps more unifying way. Speaking to Clash, Paul Smith said “We wanted to be explicit on the last record. Some people thought we went over the line, but other people thought it wasn’t far enough… Maybe we’re Centrist Dads! But you put yourselves out there, and you can’t please everybody.
He added “We’ve always done what we felt was best. We follow our own path. This is who we are and you can either like it or lump it! We live in a divided country, and we sit on the left side of that divide. We don’t apologise for that. But we’re less extreme, more conciliatory, and we’re trying to find points of connection with our audience in all of the songs. Whether they’re more emotional or more cerebral. It’s about trying to find common ground.”
Sonically, there’s been a real sense of variety to the tracks released from Nature Always Wins thus far. The lead single from the LP, Children of the Flatlands was in the group’s own words a “mildly psychedelic pop odyssey“; while its follow-up Baby, Sleep was as a more up-tempo helping of the distinctive Northumbrian art rock style that the band mastered on their razor-sharp 2005 debut album A Certain Trigger. Meanwhile the third single from the new album, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing, served as a post-punk ode to the challenges of parenting.
The Geordie rockers are due to take the new album on tour around the UK this summer. The list of confirmed tour dates is as follows:
08/06/21 – Trinity Centre – Bristol
09/06 – Earth Theatre – London
12/06 – O2 Ritz – Manchester
13/06 – Boiler Shop – Newcastle
15/06 – Leadmill – Sheffield
16/06 – Saint Lukes – Glasgow
17/06/21 – The Mill – Birmingham
