THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The road to Maxïmo Park’s eighth album Stream Of Life saw the band link up once again with Ben Allen (Gnarls Barkley), Grammy-winning producer of 2021’s near-chart-topping, pandemic-era tour de force Nature Always Wins. The reunion marks the first time they have all been together in a studio since 2016.
It also finds the band in perhaps the most reflective state they’ve been. Lead singer Paul Smith, this most lit-pop of lyric writers, took the album title from a short story by Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector, inspired by both its stream of consciousness style and the way it prompts reflection on the inner mechanisms of people’s minds. It begs the question of why they do the things that they do, even when they can seem counterintuitive to the outsider. There’s an inner flow to every individual. A stream of life.
“We’ve always tried to document the world around us at each stage of our lives while subtly nudging the music forward each time — this record continues that mission,” Smith says. “It was great to be back in a studio after recording remotely last time. Working with Ben in Atlanta… was as stimulating as it’s ever been, and I think we captured that energy. Thematically, the record covers passion, politics, and privilege amongst other topics.”
