The guys in those XTC-mining Brit bands who were big in the middle of this decade—they’re all dorks, right? When your guitars and high-hats twitch with the leg-shaking nervousness of sexually frustrated rocker teens, you have a few image-saving options: You can play it slickly restrained (à la Bloc Party), or play it cheeky by singing about robots (the Futureheads). Lacking the self-awareness to do either, Maxïmo Park played like the loutish, big-hearted, book-reading Talking Heads fans they seem to be. The resulting... More >>>