Customer Reviews

Maximum High (+16 Track Bonus CD)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The best band in the world. A Maximum High comprises fantastic guitar playing, great vocals, complex lyrics and a range of genres. With relatively heavy rock in 'Parallel Lines' (my personal favourite, the meaningful 'Ladyman' , the popular 'Going For Gold', 'On Standby' and 'This Day Was Ours'. All the other songs are great as well, especially 'Magic Streets'. There you have it. The best.

Well you see people slate Shed Seven but where else do people actually be themselves and play good music? It seems that just because people aren't familiar with the Sheds' means they aren't willing to give them a voice, just listen you'll be impressed!!!!!

Maximum High is a collection of tightly constructed songs with energetic riffs and arousing vocals. This album is up there with Suede's Coming Up, Pulp's Different Class and other notoriously successful British albums.

"and if you don't like it then you'd better (****) off to some other hills". Thus spake Rick Witter, lead singer of Shed Seven as his band accomplished the incredible feat of having more top 40 singles than any other band in the 1990s. While the singles are gathered together on the collection "Going for Gold", this 1996 album shows the band at the height of their powers, with the long-playing format allowing them more time to develop their musical vision than is afforded on the typical 3 minute pop single...
Every song on this album could've been a single, and 5 of them were released, Going for Gold, Getting Better, Where have you been tonight?, On Standby and Bully Boy. The Shed singles are masterpieces of big choruses, simple but effective guitar riffing and fairly straightforward but poetic lyrics. Critics calling them dull must've missed the menace in lyrics such as "On Standby" ("Could you stay on standby because I need another alibi - In the wrong place at the wrong time") or the humour of "Magic Streets" ("We went to the Early Learning Centre with the money that I'd lent ya - it's the price of an education..."). The guitar lines weren't flashy, but Paul Banks showed he could milk his axe for all it was worth on tracks such as the album's meltdown climax "Parallel Lines", with the attendant effects and feedback deserving of an 8 minute song. Note also the sly self reference in the album's fade out as Rick cries "Getting Better" to echo the album's opening salvo.
Yes they may have been named after a railway siding outside York, and yes the lead singer may have entered the language as rhyming slang for something he'd rather not be associated with, but Shed Seven were a serious band, with a serious claim to greatness, laid out loudly and clearly on this album

Underated, underplayed simply the best britpop band ever.

"A Maximum High" is, in my estimate, Shed Seven's best recording. It has the classic Brit-pop sound (much like Oasis, Pulp, Cast, the Dandys, and Northern Uproar) and offers some real standout tracks, particularly "Going for Gold." The few of the songs have a harder "edge," but not nearly so much as their debut CD.