Maximo Park new single

First single from forthcoming LP "Quicken the Heart" released on CD/ 2 x 7" vinyl/ digital download through Warp Records on May 4

By now you would, in all probability, have heard "Wraithlike", the first tantalizing taster from Maximo Park's imminent third album, "Quicken the Heart". However, that is but one piece of the forthcoming Maximo Park puzzle. Just as the shiny new third album, produced by Nick Launay, is pretty much full to bursting with all manner of aural surprises and delights - and pushes the band to new levels not previously witnessed - so the first proper single is yet another delicious leftfield turn. For with "The Kids Are Sick Again", Paul Smith and company have pulled off something wonderfully rare indeed: they've created an instantly immortal, poignantly timed, ridiculously addictive pop song.

At once powered by fury but laced with romance and optimism, "The Kids Are Sick Again" is an impassioned call to arms, an anthemic clarion call against societal complacency and small-town boredom, or as Smith himself says, "it's a song about escape...about breaking free of your mental shackles and jumping into the unknown". As such, it is a song which resolutely defies traditional structure and convention and uplifts and galvanizes in equal measure, finding a band operating at the very peak of their powers. This is a roof-raising, chest-swelling, triumphant single of the kind so rarely made anymore, and one that definitely ranks as one of the band's absolute best.

Following on from the download-only teaser "Wraithlike", this is a double whammy to sharpen anticipation for "Quicken the Heart" like no other. Indeed, so besotted with "Wraithlike" was Zane Lowe that upon him debuting the track on his radio show on March 9, he ended up playing it twice, back to back, followed swiftly by Jo Whiley the next day. An extremely rare honour indeed, but one certainly befitting the stellar return of Maximo Park - and we mean literally stellar. Just wait until you see the artwork...