Walking the Margins: Paul Smith interviewed

The Skinny: Your debut solo album [Margins] is miles away from what fans would expect – ambient, introspective, sedate and slower than anything you’ve done with Maximo Park – are these songs that just didn’t fit?
Paul: I’d done some shows over the last two or three years – had six or seven songs that didn’t really fit in with the band – and I would go out and play them just with an acoustic guitar. My friends said it was good and I thought other people might too, which got me thinking I’d put something out myself and keep control of it – make sure it’s all done the right way. So I got David Brewis from Field Music to play bass on the record over Christmas time. Once he’d done that – even though it was just me playing guitar, my mate playing drums and him playing bass – it felt like a real band.

You've toured the world and released three albums in fairly quick succession with Maxïmo, was this as much an opportunity to step off the rollercoaster for a bit?
Definitely, I’ve always tried to not get too embroiled in being the singer in an alternative rock band. That’s a huge part of my life, but the bigger reasons I wanted to put this record out are that a) it’s quite scary for me to do something myself after being in a band for 5-6 years, and b) I don’t want to keep doing something that’s frantic all the time. In some ways it’s a nice little get-out clause from ever being bored with Maxïmo Park. I’m glad to say that we’ve always been happy with doing other things; I mean, I recorded stuff with Modeselektor a couple of years ago. I like to try and spice things up a little, not just for myself but in order to keep the band a vital force.

Has being on a label like Warp helped in that respect?
That was one of the reasons [Maxïmo Park] signed with Warp, we were getting offered more money in other places that for me would have potentially been a short-term thing – people trying to mould you into the latest thing. We’ll never be a cool band, but I’d like to think we’ll always be an interesting band. Fashion has left a lot of people behind. I’d still say we were part of some media constructed wave, but by being our own men we were allowed to do anything we wanted on Warp. So rather than people going ‘shock, horror – Maxïmo Park are doing this’, it’s like ‘oh well, they’re on Warp, I knew there was something weird about them.

What’s the plan for 2011?
The Park have been writing songs gradually over the year, even though we’ve all been busy with our own things. There’s a good launch pad, but for the first time we’ve not set ourselves any limits and said ‘OK, we need to put another record out by autumn’ or anything like that. Next year’s going to be a completely creative time. I just want to do something amazing that blows people away. But it’s very difficult to do that, we had a lot of success with our first album and a lot of people got to know the band, which sets you up in a nice way – people are waiting for your music. But it also means that people have a preconception of the band. Even just releasing Margins is one way of throwing something else into the mix and making people think again. But that’s our task, that’s our next year.