Credit: Far Out / Joanie O’Mara

The best record you’ve never heard: Maximilian dusts off a lesser known but much loved slice of rockabilly

Thu 5 March 2026 12:58, UK

Since first gracing the Brighton folk pop fringes around 2024’s Surrender debut, Maximilian has been eagerly trying to capture the genre’s ramshackle energy in his work.

All knotty, personal lyricism and tumbling songcraft, Maximilian navigates a pleasingly shifting terrain among his pieces, all just about kept together but could collapse at any moment.

It recalls the purer folk tradition at its fraught best, live and impatient, blemished and off-kilter enough for much-needed weathered character that keeps the affair crackling with an alive air.

Two years on from his debut, and Maximilian seems to be up to the same old tricks. Recorded during the Super Beaver Moon with a loose ensemble of musicians, “Expressing and celebrating gratitude, in the face of whatever might change”, new single ‘I Know You’ sees Maximilian dwell in deeper pools of intrepid humanity, spinning a tune both affirmative but spooked with that unmistakable ruminative ache.

Ahead of his upcoming Diurnals EP in May, we caught up with Maximilian and picked his brains for the lost record gem you need to hear pronto.

Sanford Clark - Darling Dear — Credit: Record Sleeve

Maximilian discussing the Darling Dear compilation

“I recommend Sanford Clark. A rockabilly singer with a voice as cool as Johnny Cash,” they said. “Listen to ‘Still as the Night’ as soon as the heat of the sun lingers after dark. There’s something about his voice in this that is so humid.

“Listen to ‘Ooo Baby’ if you want to dance with your lover, or with a drink in your hand.

“‘Darling Dear’ is a wonderful doo wop bop. It doesn’t get more romantic and nostalgic than this.

“Sanford had a couple of hits and a few years of mild success that were ultimately underwhelming enough for him to leave the music business and work in construction. It’s not tragic, it’s not an overly compelling story, it’s just how things go sometimes. Listen to his music because it’s good and you like it, not because he was famous or legendary, it’s as simple as that.”

While not standing as tall in the rockabilly memory as your Gene Vincents or Eddie Cochrans, Clark’s stirringly twangy songbook certainly feels just as evocative as much of the surrounding rock and roll chart-toppers, dripping with attitude and smouldering romance but existing in a more languid place than his livewire peers.

It’s the stirring sense of cinema which marks Clark from the rest. Teeming with dusky stroll that you can bet money helped shape David Lynch’s surrealist Americana landscape in decades to come, Clark’s cooing baritone and nocturnal romance shine with a uniquely atmospheric dazzle when dreaming up his enchanted balladry.

We don’t know, but it’s not impossible to imagine Clark looking up to the lunar magic above when penning his numbers, just as Maximilian sought inspiration from the Super Beaver Moon to grab at the same mystical quality that shone over the ‘Still as the Night’ singer at his best.