Maxïmo Park

If Franz Ferdinand is the Oasis of the current dance-punk movement, churning out effortlessly populist singles; and Bloc Party is the Blur responsible for the genre’s artier, more sophisticated studio creations; then Maxïmo Park has emerged as the present-day equivalent of Pulp supplying a much-needed bridge between unbridled hedonism and academic insularity. The Newcastle-based band has already distinguished itself with two stunningly realized singles — “Apply Some Pressure” and “The Coast Is Always Changing” — which take the movement’s hallmark stutter-stop guitar attack as a starting point and augment it with Lukas Wooller’s bold, buoyant keyboard lines. The rest of A Certain Trigger isn’t as revelatory as Franz Ferdinand’s or Bloc Party’s debut albums, but there’s something to be said for filling in the gaps.