Maximo Park, Good Shoes - Brixton Academy, London - Friday 12th October 2007

This was the first of two consecutive nights watching Maximo Park at Brixton Academy. Pretty much every time I've seen them in the past, I've walked out wanting to repeat the experience again immediately - so I thought I would do so for once. These 2 Brixton nights also boasted some great support acts, with Good Shoes along tonight (as on the rest of the Maximo main tour), and The Maccabees along tomorrow – 2 of my favourite bands of the year. All in all, this was a good excuse to have a great Friday night out.

After being relieved of my chewing gum by the absurdly over-zealous security guards (it might stick to the floor, apparently, and even promising not to chew any whilst in the venue doesn’t let you retain it), I got a beer and found a position for Good Shoes. They came on and started off an uplifting 35 minute set with The Photos On My Wall. Initially, as the venue was quite empty, the sound was echoing around a lot, so the band didn’t sound as good as they could have. However, knowing the songs pretty well, I was enjoying it, and already looking forward to their headline London show next month.

As the set wore on, the venue filled up, and the sound started to get better – the last 4 songs in particular were sounding great. Luckily, they saved much of the best for last, so new single Smalltown Girl got an airing, as did Morden, and debut single All In My Head. By the time the last stragglers were getting into the venue, the band had a decent number of people dancing at the front. It will be great to see them headlining a (smaller) venue soon, where the sound and crowd is all set up especially for them, because they sounded good in this set.

Maximo Park’s arrival was greeted with total hysteria in the audience, and I was amazed by how many girls there were in the crowd (maybe the 2 are related). Maximo played a very different set to their earlier gigs this year, with Limassol and Going Missing coming along much earlier in the show, rather than at the end. Paul Smith, as ever, looked amazing in his black suit, red shirt and bowler hat – and he was really energetic, climbing on top of speakers, and running around manically.

In all, the set was a typically brilliant Maximo Park set – one of the best live shows you can ever see, but (for Maximo), nothing really out of the ordinary. That shows what a fantastic live band they are, that their average live show is better than most bands' peaks. By the time Our Velocity closed the main set, and a totally mental Graffiti finished it all off, they had played every song bar one from their current album, and all of the good stuff from before that as well. I watched much of the gig thinking how fantastic they were, but also being very pleased that I’d get to see it all again tomorrow. A truly fantastic live act, I just can't see them enough at the moment.