Sparks, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

The pandemic turned everything upside down: besides face masks and Zoom mutes, Sparks was back on the charts in what feels like the first time in decades. There's even a movie out about them. Did greater America finally rediscover these two after all those years quietly keeping their corner of L.A. weird? Twenty-four albums and fifty years later Russ Mael's range is down a storey or six and Ron's glasses are a bit thicker, but the production's better than ever and the wit still doesn't quit, and they've wisely moved away from their less approachable chamber music days to something, yes, closer to their last chart success of the 1980s. That doesn't mean they've gotten artistically lazy, mind you: "Lawnmower" feels like a zippier earworm version of "Suburban Homeboy" in all the right ways, I like the splash of insincerity in "All That" and the thinly disguised indictment of modern disinformation in "Nothing Travels Faster Than the Speed of Light," and solid pop grooves keep it moving like "Left Out in the Cold" and "One for the Ages." Not everything fires on all cylinders, such as the lurching beat and opaque lyrics of "Sainthood Is Not In Your Future," and "Stravinsky's Only Hit" is high-quality but hard to follow, while their other attempts at topicality ("iPhone" and closer "Please Don't F--k Up My World") are a bit too hamfisted to fully enjoy. Stiil, they make up for it with other entrancing tracks like "Self-Effacing," a wacky anthem of the excessively modest (lyrical highlights: "I'm not the guy who says 'I'm the guy'" and "Thank you but Autotune has been used/used and perhaps a trifle abused"), fabulous humour-infested throwbacks to their zany 70s output in "Onomato Pia" and "The Existential Threat" (a prescient COVID commentary?) and my favourite "Pacific Standard Time," a luxurious buffet for the ears that simultaneously mocks and celebrates the superficiality of southern California in devilish equal measure. Meanwhile, they're recording another album and they're actually going to tour in 2022. I, for one, blame the Delta variant. (Content: F-bombs in "iPhone" and obviously "Please Don't F--k Up My World.")

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Sparks, Halfnelson

They later billed themselves as Englishmen; they were not. They billed themselves as Halfnelson; that didn't stick (in fairness Albert Grossman was largely to blame). They billed themselves as good; their début wasn't. All the pieces were there: Russ Mael sang like a 12-year-old with tight pants, Ron Mael had his stache, the lyrics were wacky and the wit was undeveloped but present. Unfortunately, the melody lines are all over the place, self-savaging otherwise better tracks ("Wonder Girl," "Simple Ballet") and dooming others ("Biology 2"), and producer Todd Rundgren left too much to the band who resorted to stripped-down mixes and studio jams because of their inexperience. The rock sort of works ("High C," "(No More) Mr Nice Guys") but doesn't really play to their strengths, and the more competent slow jams like "Fletcher Honorama" are listenable but hardly stand out. But glimpses of the future show up now and then: "Saccharin and the War's" war sacrifice motif for weight loss is only let down by the flat recording and "Slowboat" might have fallen off a better album yet to come. That album wasn't the next one A Woofer in Tweeter's Clothing, either, which reissuer Edsel put together in a two disc set. The production under Thaddeus Lowe is richer, but the same problems persist, and it wasn't until they jettisoned the Mankeys and went to Island Records that they really took off. The most curious inclusion is a earlier mix of "I Like Girls," practically a demo tape, and nowhere near as fun as the fully realised version from Big Beat. About the best I can say is they got better. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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Les Rita Mitsouko, Marc & Robert

France's oddest musical duo, and that's saying something, n'est pas, decided they weren't odd enough and had to pair up for a few tracks with America's oddest fake English duo. This may not have been a wise idea; indeed, this album actually was their lowest charting effort in their home country, though that may simply mean French audiences found its Anglophilic tendencies treasonous. As means of adaptation acoustic instruments are credited in the liner notes but sunk in the mix, bringing forth a more synth-heavy style which suited Sparks' contemporary output, and Catherine Ringer's vocal range matches Russ Mael's eerily well. He doesn't sing French so good ("Hip Kit"), but what do you expect from Americans? — rather better is "Singing in the Shower" even though it turns the French half basically into a glorified session band. The non-Sparks tracks are actually the majority, and it is here that Les Rita's usual sprawling madness reasserts itself in things like the shrilly schlocky continental pastiche "Mandolino City," the aspirational "Ailleurs" and the luxurious "Petite Fille Princesse," though there are less inspiring efforts, to be sure: "Le Petit Train"'s attempt to be thought-provoking is undercut by the overpowered dance beat and their independent English language output is just bizarre ("Harpie & Harpo" and "Perfect Eyes" in particular, though the eyebrow-raising "Tongue Dance" at least has a good groove to recommend it). Marc & Robert's incautious mashup of styles and even languages is on balance a little too unbalanced to appeal to the casual listener, but Europop devotees may find it a refreshing change of pace, Sparks fanatics like me will certainly find it interesting and Canadians will at least understand the lyrics. The CD issue adds another Sparks cover of sorts in "Live in Las Vegas," but this Ringer-Mael duet is a rare live performance actually worth listening to even if you're not a Sparks freak. (Content: no obvious issues, though my French est beaucoup rusty.)

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The Best of Sparks: Music That You Can Dance To

What were they thinking? How could America's favourite phony Los Angelino Brits squeeze out something this awful? It all starts with Curb Records' bizarrely misleading title, to which the Mael brothers hold blameless, but the title becomes increasingly inappropriate in that it is hardly their best work nor previously released material and it's only barely danceable merely at intervals (see also Pink Floyd's similarly unadvisedly-named A Collection of Great Dance Songs). The title track leads off well enough, and you can actually wiggle your hips to it a bit, but every other track just fragments into a terminal surfeit of dated New Wave overdrive. Even most of their former lyrical wit is missing with the possibility of "Change," here in its initial underdeveloped form which the band revised into a far greater track on Plagarism, and the minor hit "Modesty Plays," a reworked version of the theme song they did for a failed ABC pilot of Modesty Blaise. Low points include most of the album but particularly "Shopping Mall of Love," an ill-conceived attempt to recover that lost literary verve, and the flat and tedious "Let's Get Funky" which is anything but. The beats don't make sense, the slap bass is inescapable, the synthesizers are even more excessive than usual, and I've heard better orchestral hits out of my toy Casio. "Everybody say yeah! Say yeah!" sings a desperate Russ Mael on "Fingertips," but I'd just say "nah" and look to another of their albums. Any of them but this. (Content: mild adult themes.)

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FFS

FFS, it's FFS. I'm not sure if that sentiment was what Franz Ferdinand and Sparks had in mind with the name of their alleged supergroup, but may I say that my statement was meant in the greatest regard? Sparks fans like me will be elated that this album is on balance more S than FF (though for the same reason I don't mind saying FF fans are in for a treat as well), but the amazing thing is that the whole really is incontrovertibly better than the sum of the parts. Russ Mael and Alex Kapranos braid nearly perfectly as united vocalists, and while every song obviously sports pencil-stached Ron Mael's surrealistic stamp, it's a blend of Ferdinand's more modern sensibilities with Sparks' studious musical syncretism that truly works. Plus, as one would expect from a Sparks production, the subject matter runs the gamut all the way from crafty references to the Norks ("Dictator's Son") to police brutality ("Police Encounters") to erotomania ("Johnny Delusional," the lead track that immediately lets you know you're in for something great) to nerd supremacy ("The Man Without A Tan") to Japanese girls with Hello Kitty Uzis ("Soo Desu Ne"). Most everything is listenable and quite a bit is uncontrollably danceable -- look for some or all of these tracks in a knowing DJ's setlist near you. Low points are brief and relative, with "Things I Won't Get" being probably the song I got the least, and "Little Guy From The Suburbs"' hollowly manufactured drama comes off as disagreeably hipsterish instead of playfully witty. But who can hate on an album that by contrast features such deathless prose as "I gave up blow and Adderall for you" ("Call Girl"), or the rude, zany and shout-it-from-the-rafters closer "P*ss Off"? On the penultimate track, Kapranomael croon in dueling intentionally vapid librettos that collabourations don't work, they don't work, they don't work, but if you have the right set of minds and the right range of creative lunacy, they sure can, they sure do. The deluxe edition adds four additional tracks that are almost as good as the rest, including the somber yet lyrically stark "A Violent Death." (Content: infectious rudeness, mild drug and sexual references.)

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Sparks, Kimono My House

It's the American invasion: the faux-Anglos from that bastion of Britaindom, Los Angeles. That's only the beginning, because what they've wrought, besides a great long-playing Memorex ad that shatters glass at twenty paces, is an amazing, enjoyable, innovative infusion of humour, art and intelligence into glam rock. It doesn't hurt that Russ Mael's rafter-raising vocals make the songs instantly identifiable, but the knowing lyrics, unpredictable styles and thoroughly original subject matter make it fun. They took a cowboy cliché, for crying out loud, complete with gunshots and a charging guitar line, and made it into a metaphor for serial relationships ("This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us"). Albert Einstein's formative years from his parents' perspective are dissected in "Talent is An Asset." The globe becomes the distance between a man and woman who can't meet in the middle on "Equator." Get the picture, gaijin? The production values are strong, even if the sound is occasionally a little muddy, and the consistency of Ron Mael's songsmanship and the occasionally danceable rhythms are head and shoulders above their uneven earlier works. Two reissues exist; the original reissue adds two great B-sides, "Barbecutie" (guffaw and kneeslaps) and "Lost And Found," while the second adds a live version of "Amateur Hour" from a later incarnation of the band which is admittedly inferior. Never mind that. Enjoy these wackjobs' first truly great album no matter where you find it, because you won't find any other album that simultaneously achieves its goals for art, intelligence, quality and humour anywhere else in the world. (Content: innuendo, sexual themes.)

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