Even though this writer considers Sparks to be one of life's most dependable joys, the awful truth is that we are still largely incapable of truly appreciating the sonic brilliance of Ronald and Russell Mael, who, as Sparks, have spent the past HALF CENTURY (holy fuck, has it been that long?) creating music for which there has never been an easy description.
After all, how does one describe what is that Sparks do in a world seemingly flooded with artists who have no idea what "art" is, or an audience that doesn't so much know what it likes as accept what corporate radio programmers hammer into their ear holes?
As a result, Sparks have been signed to and dropped by just about every major label on the planet, experienced the rare air of chart-topping success in the UK while their popularity in their native U.S. barely registered a pulse, and followed their own singular vision while still managing to hop a few bandwagons (disco, new wave).
Ask any die-hard fan what their favorite Sparks album, or musical time period, is and you're liable to receive dozens of different answers. Our own preference leans to the band's early '80's period that saw them collaborate with L.A. band Gleaming Spires, resulting in three brilliant albums of delightfully snarky new wave, Whomp That Sucker, Angst In My Pants, and In Outer Space.
Naturally, with every successive Sparks release, we secretly hoped the band would return to the same upbeat rock sensibilities that yielded such monster hits (in our mind, anyway) as "Tips For Teens", "Moustache", and "All You Ever Think About Is Sex", but it seemed the band was more intent on continuing to explore new ground, with wildly varying degrees of success.
The band's low point, you ask?
That would probably be 1994's Gratuitous Sax And Senseless Violins, which saw the duo building the flimsiest of songs on foundations of sand, or Plagiarism, where the band, for the first time ever, literally repeated itself by reworking their biggest hits with help from the likes of Faith No More (!), Erasure, and Jimmy Somerville.
Thankfully, Balls arrived three years later to prove that the band still knew how to craft deceptively simple, yet lyrically adventurous melodies. Tammy Glover's drumming seems to propel the duo to rock out more than they had in fifteen years, which helped make their return to U.S. stages all the more irresistible.
With Lil' Beethoven, the duo began crafting songs with a hypnotic sense of repetition that challenged even the most refined pop palettes and, as a result, met with complete commercial indifference. It did, however, result in some of the most glowing reviews the band had ever received, no doubt encouraging them to continue exploring this avenue, which they did with relative aplomb.
Hello Young Lovers and Exotic Creatures of The Deep built upon this template with lyrics that continue to defy and delight and musical arrangements that no longer relied upon the listener to fill in the blanks.
This, of course, was not a problem on the band's unexpected collaboration with Franz Ferdinand that resulted in FFS, an album that stands as a high artistic watermark for both bands and has obviously reinvigorated the duo yet again to reach new heights, which they do on their 23rd studio album Hippopotamus.
The real star of the album, though, is guitarist Dean Menta, whose playing shows an artistic command of color that continues to bring the best out of Ron Mael's musical arrangements. Menta joined the band in time to play on Lil' Beethoven and has continued to play a large part in the group's artistic resurgence on every album since, culminating in what could very well be the best album of the group's career.
Keep in mind that we read just as many record reviews as you do and know full well the trap that one sets by uttering such high praise, but this is a sentiment obviously shared by the A&R team at BMG who, after taking on the band's considerable publishing catalog, practically demanded to also release this new album upon hearing the finished results.
Not bad for a couple dudes in their 70's (okay, Russell is only 68, but still).
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23rd time's the charm