Sparks - review

Innovative. Inspirational. Unique. Seminal. Oddball. These are all words which have been used to describe US band Sparks. It has been 32 years since they hit the charts with their now-classic single ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both of Us’, which introduced their unconventional and inventive musical (and visual) style. With the release of Hello Young Lovers, their twentieth album, this is still very much in evidence - as indeed is Ron’s Hitleresque moustache!

Brothers Ron and Russell Mael, as writers, arrangers and producers of this album, have remained the creative dynamic of the band throughout an ever changing line-up. They have conjured a musical pic ‘n’ mix that fuses the style and scale of a rock opera to the vibrancy of live performance.

The sheer verbal density and grandiose structure of the opening and closing tracks - ‘Dick Around’ and ‘As I Sit To Play The Organ At The Notre Dame Cathedral’ - take the scale of Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ but flavour them with the neuroticism of a Brian de Palma thriller soundtrack.

If we wanted pop opera this frenetic, we would put G4 on crack. There is an innate and unrelenting theatricality in the work of Sparks which makes this not always the easiest album to sit down and enjoy.

The future single ‘Perfume’ (released 13 February) is more modernistic in feel. A piano loop over a synthy baseline as Russell lists a long succession of girl’s names and the perfume they wear. It is the kind of obsessive repetition that can work its way quickly into your own mental iPod, but could just as easily come to represent a dripping tap in the middle of a sleepless night.

There is no doubting their drive to innovate and mix diverse musical swatches. ‘(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country’ clashes a disco harpsichord with a synth-brass section and an almost African rhythmic vocal chorus. Its Malcolm McLaren meets Paul Simon, and that’s before we reach the Hair ‘Age of Aquarius’ diversion.

"Sparks have put together an album which has moments of panache that The Darkness could only dream of."

Ultimately, what are you to make of it all? It’s baffling for baffling sake. Even the promised humour of that track’s title is dissipated by the lack of musical focus.

On a number such as ‘There’s No Such Thing As Aliens’, there is much declamatory vocals in a mock-opera style. Whereas a more commercially-orientated producer such as Jim Steinman would take this kind of material and build a developing song structure for the likes of Meatloaf or Bonnie Tyler, Sparks lose us in a repetitive loop.

The talk-singing robs the songs of natural warmth that a singer would usually provide; the lack of climax or resolution in the songs for the listener lends only distance from the material. This is a very esoteric experience.

There is one track that stands out as an unalloyed joy: ‘Here Kitty’. From the comedy ‘Meowing’, to the winsome beckoning a tiger down from a high wire with the words ‘Here Kitty’, Sparks deliver a kitchtastic winner. It is the song you will put on repeat; unlike the rest of the album that you will feel has been on repeat before you hear to the end of the track.

Overall, Sparks have put together an album which has moments of panache that The Darkness could only dream of. After the previous nineteen albums, they still are vigorously ploughing their own experimental furrow. However, for the uninitiated there is little to cling onto and Hello Young Lovers will yield them few new fans. Only as the new soundtrack to their live performance is where this work will spark to life.

Originally published on 7th February 2006