In 2019, Maxïmo Park found themselves at a crossroads when founding member and keyboardist Lukas Wooller left the band to immigrate to Australia. “Another member of the gang has left,” frontman Paul Smith tells Apple Music. “We knew we would have a very different feel for the next record, and the dynamic between us had changed again. After the sadness of that, we started thinking this is a really good opportunity for us to do something different.” Seizing the opportunity to reinvent themselves, for their seventh LP, Smith and his bandmates recruited Grammy-winning Atlanta producer Ben Allen—who quickly bonded with the trio after visiting them in Newcastle to discuss the project before the pandemic hit. Staggered remote sessions on opposite sides of the Atlantic yielded a body of anthemic guitar music, turning more inward after 2017’s politically charged Risk to Exist. “You want to give people that pop thrill that hooks you in immediately,” Smith says. “Hopefully, there's something a little bit mysterious or emotional that has depth, too.” Read on for Smith's track-by-track guide. Partly of My Making “It's about priorities shifting. We try and wrong-foot people a little bit, and I think me singing about losing luminosity and getting older while this totally rocking, uplifting song comes on with all of these buoyant strings is a little bit of a joke. It's me saying, 'I've lost it a bit,' and then saying, 'Not really.'” Versions of You “As a new dad, I wanted to try and write about my daughter in a positive way and about parenthood in a negative way—because there are lots of ups and downs. I look at lots of pictures and videos when I'm away from home, as people do when they're away from their loved ones. And in some senses, these moments are very detached from who you are and what you're doing right now. And in the end, the only thing you can think of is how that person is right now, or the last time that you saw that person.” Baby, Sleep “The approach was to focus on sleep deprivation, though make it quite fun. I remember watching Dazed and Confused and NBA basketball, which I usually can't watch live. So yeah, all of those things kind of popped into the song, and the usual sort of TV shows where you have people telling you what they think about politics and you think, like, 'What are these buffoons doing in my front room?'” Placeholder “It’s that idea of having one last opportunity and saying, ‘Let's have one more go, and we'll try and make the shot.’ I think that's one thing that is typical of Maxïmo Park, that kind of bittersweet quality.” All of Me “We actually collaborated with Ben on this one, and he sent us a demo which had this amazing keyboard riff. That allowed me, as a songwriter, to contrast the big emotions of the chorus with the more statement aspect of the song. You can make it into something more domestic and family-oriented, but it's this idea of ordinary life being exciting and romantic.” Ardour (feat. Pauline Murray) “We were out for a curry with Ben when he came over to Newcastle before the record was made, and Pauline Murray of Penetration and The Invisible Girls was there. We didn't ever think about asking her to sing with us, possibly because we're maybe a bit too reverent of her. She takes it somewhere else and does enhance the sort of punk vibe. But again, that idea of domestic life being quite hard, Pauline's got two kids and has definitely felt those kind of feelings that are in the song. It just adds an emotional heft to the song, I think.” Meeting Up “It's looking back at a sort of former life and thinking, 'Am I still part of this?' There's a few lyrics that cross over on this record. And on this one, it talks about the prefabricated buildings that are bound to outlive me. They were temporary housing, and they're still there. In our song 'Write This Down,' it has the word 'prefabricated' in it, because that song was about partially listening to Prefab Sprout, one of my favorite bands.” Why Must a Building Burn? “It's about empathy, as a lot of our music is. One of our old merchandise sellers, Nick, was involved in the Bataclan tragedy and was killed. I saw his photograph on the news in our country, and I couldn't quite believe what I was seeing. These are human people, they're not just statistics and names and demographics; they're people who meant something. It connected with the idea of what do I want to do with my life, and how do I want to remember people. It became a tribute to living life and commemorating somebody that you love.” I Don’t Know What I’m Doing “When Duncan [Lloyd, Maxïmo Park guitarist] sends me a song, I just try and tap into the atmosphere of what he's doing. This was one of those songs where I just sang at the top of my voice, and at the end of the song I'm almost barking like a dog. I sent them all through to Ben in Atlanta and said, 'Do what you want with them.' The song retains that kind of vitality and first-takeness, probably because I can't actually do it more than two or three times without my voice disappearing entirely.” The Acid Remark “The title reminded me of some sort of short story, and so I tried to go with that for the rest of the song. I felt like I wanted to leave it fairly mysterious, but also give people a sense of it being a romantic, perhaps more youthful song. My own domestic life is quite settled, and I was using my own errant youth as a sort of springboard for this one.” Feelings I’m Supposed to Feel “Now that I've had a child, I want to be well and I want to see as much of her life as possible and be there for her. People do try and say that by 40 you should be settled and have your own house, or by 20 you should be at university. From whatever background you're from, you'll have these kind of societal norms that you're supposed to subscribe to. And I find that quite oppressive, really. I've always tried to disengage myself from them, and yet I live a normal life. I'm subject to all of those different pressures everybody else is.” Child of the Flatlands “It's a song about childhood and how much I cherish those places on the outskirts of town where things don't quite fit together, and nature has made a bit of a comeback and taken over and reclaimed its former territory. We plucked the line 'nature always wins' from this song to represent the album, because we felt that it does refer to the natural world and how we're at nature's mercy a lot of the time—whether it's California wildfires and big freezes in Texas or earthquakes in Mexico. Climate change and all of those things are very real. Sometimes, we just have to accept that we're the smaller guy in this fight.”