Pitchfork

Slipping into the Paul Epworth-produced post-wave sweepstakes after the Futureheads and Bloc Party, Maxïmo Park were underdogs from the get go. But instead of being spit out by a populace growing bored with gung-ho rhythms and the word "angular," the Newcastle quintet more than held their own with 2005's A Certain Trigger, a burst of treble-rock so taut it made Franz Ferdinand sound Funkadelic. Now, with their competition slumping slightly, there's an opportunity for Maxïmo Park to start setting trends themselves. Did they take advantage? Well...no. Much like their cohorts, the group strives for grander statements with their sophomore album by enlisting a mainstream producer and offering-up more midtempo fare. In comparison, it makes their debut LP come off like a youthful demo. And-- much like their cohorts-- some of the band's winsome scrappiness is lost in transition.

Compressed into a rumbling guitar-rock fastball, A Certain Trigger was marked by Epworth's zoomed-in production. Along with its hairpin songwriting, that record captured a one-take candidness-- you could hear bug-eyed lead singer Paul Smith deliberately inhale before rattling off a manic melody at the top of "Now I'm All Over the Shop". Our Earthly Pleasures' sound is more calculating and broad-- and it clashes with the band's spitfire inclinations.

A catalyst behind this change is producer Gil Norton, who worked the boards on the Pixies' 1989 classic Doolittle and, more recently, eponymous albums from Ben Kweller and Morningwood. Although Smith claims, "The gaps between words are the things that really intrigue me/ It's the gasps and the sighs that say more about what's inside you," on opener "Girls Who Play Guitars," such incidental sonic perks are largely excised in favor of a more commercial, gap-less sheen. Whereas lesser tracks on A Certain Trigger were rendered passable partially thanks to Epworth's condensed attack, Our Earth Pleasures duds like "Your Urge" (which introduces itself with Billy Joel-style piano flourishes) and normalized modern rocker "Sandblasted and Set Free" are done-in by the record's spic-and-span treatment. Even when the new style seems to work, as on the Devo-meets-Nirvana first single "Our Velocity", recent live versions of the song-- including one on "Top of the Pops"-- blow away the recorded take. Questionable studio decisions aside, Maxïmo Park have at least one distinct advantage over their Brit brethren: the desperate intensity of howler Paul Smith.

His guileless Geordie accent intact, Smith may be the most likeable frontman among his immediate contemporaries (sorry, Kele). He's traded-in the signature comb-over for a sharp bowler hat, but the spastic singer is still neurotically consumed by unfulfilling relationships. On early single "Apply More Pressure", he sang, "I hope that I will live to see you undress," to a potential partner. But now that he's seen her naked, it seems, she's gone away.

From the ominous unpacking tale "Books From Boxes" ("You have to leave, I appreciate that/ But I hate when conversation slips out of our grasp") to the anxious aftermath of "By the Monument" ("Posterity has hold of us now/ Am I just waiting for the next chapter?") to the Before Sunset nostalgia of "Parisian Skies" ("I don't think she knew how much I loved her"), Smith chronicles a particularly harsh long-distance split in a style that's part Stipe-ian oblique and part emo confessional. He's prone to the occasional distracting Word of the Day ("I wonder how we tessellate/ It would have been much wiser to allow these feelings to abate," he enunciates on "Your Urge") and his flashes of Cocker-style wit come too few and far between, but the singer finds an affecting comfort zone somewhere between sentimental and nonsensical. And while the optimistic stand-out "A Fortnight's Time" veers from Pleasures' sad script, the hook is a winning example of Smith's quirky expertise: "Would you like to go on a date with me?/ And I know it's old-fashioned to say so/ Five time five equals twenty-five/ Don't you know your times tables by now?" (He may or may not be hitting on a third grader.)

One of the greatest legacies of the original post-punk-meets-new-wave bands were their stylistic diversity; groups like XTC, Talking Heads, and Devo were not only distinct from each other, but they thrived on pushing their respective sounds into unpredictable territory. So the fact that the era's apparent ancestors are largely repeating themselves or evolving in the same traditionally commercial, "serious" direction is slightly disheartening. Maxïmo Park's first album featured a hazy, spoken-word anomaly called "Acrobat" that sounded like nothing else on the LP. The song was ballsy and beautiful, and it hinted at an untapped adventurousness. There's nothing like "Acrobat" on Our Earthly Pleasures. With their new album, Maxïmo Park avoid both utter disaster and absolute success by playing it safe. Nice and safe.