22. Maxïmo Park – Now I’m All Over The Shop

With its Looney Tunes melodies and frantic pace, Now I’m All Over The Shop’s verses and choruses feel like distant cousins rather than natural bedfellows, so maybe it’s a testament to the song’s one constant – Paul Smith’s breathless, urgent vocals – that the incongruent components actually become a virtue under his stewardship. Smith’s sense of arrangement is on top form here: the gabble and gasp of his verses are best in short bursts, and he knows it: the chorus is with us within 30 seconds of kick-off. And what a chorus – the sweetest Maximo Park have ever written. Triumphant and chest-beating, it’s so heavy with classic pop devices that you almost forget the previous frenzy. Indeed, with a brief foray into three-time and an ascending bassline, it could be mistaken for Bacharach were it a touch slower and played with a lounge orchestra. Brief, bubbly and boisterous, Now I’m All Over The Shop is a masterclass in conviction – not many songs have been written in the past ten years with this much pride.