Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
A contradiction should always be used for a basis of an argument when the truth is as shady as a large canopy spread over a wide area and with the Sun and the rain both beating down on it with vigorous ambition. Contradiction should not be employed when discussing Maximo Park’s Paul Smith’s latest project with the Imitations, the musically absorbing Contradictions.
Where Contradictions lay maybe for the fan of the high energy pulse employed when Maximo Park lead their music through grooves of fire and earthly brimstone and then as they get their head round the feel of overwhelming meditative, almost self analysis state which comes through in each of the 13 songs that fill the album with determination and the thought of having had self denial imposed upon them until the time was absolutely right.
Whilst melancholy can be looked upon by some, those with little emotional rage steeped into their veins, as a form of self-indulgence, it nevertheless offers more to the works of the artist to find such introspection being readily employed and is one that should be harnessed at all costs less life become staid and predictable.
Away from the comfortable pull of a band, a songwriter can certainly spread their wings more; they can delve more into their thoughts without being pulled back from a brink, the edge into which might not be returned. It is on its own merit the absorption of personal poetry which makes the musician a more interesting figure.
Tracks such as Break Me Down, Before The Perspiration Falls, Fill In The Blanks, Coney Island (4th of July) and People on Sunday beat with this poetic charm and personal thought and throughout the album the songs explode with a dynamic fluidity that would look out of place if performed by a Russian ballet company taming a storm tossed Atlantic Ocean in full anger and storming foam.
Contradictions is worthy of the time it has taken to complete, good things do after all take time to come to fruition and for Paul Smith and the Imitations, this is no mock love affair, this is as an authentic experience as can be hoped for.
Paul Smith and the Imitations release Contradictions on August 21st.
Ian D. Hall