Twenty-six albums into their career, pop duo Sparks have maintained a level of sophistication that stands up with their older work, complete with a production sheen that gives their idiosyncratic backdrop a contemporary flavor. Having explored their shared history on Edgar Wright’s 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, Ron and Russell Mael have pointed their attention to the future with this latest release, Mad!.
Vocalist Russell sounds energised on “Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab”, a bouncy dance track interspersed with Ennio Morricone-esque Western guitars. Russell, ever the frontman, pivots from whimsy (“My Devotion”) to harder, grittier vocal stylings (“I-405 Rules”). Like Godley & Creme, Sparks are a composite of a formidable vocalist and a brainy multi-instrumentalist seated close at hand. Furthering the similarity between the two groups, “A Little Bit of Light Banter” sounds like the fast-paced blues rock number Kevin Godley might have written on 2020’s Muscle Memory.
Keen to explore new territories, Ron and Russell Mael change the tempo to unveil “Hit Me, Baby”, a quasi-reggae-sounding track, complete with soulful inflections. Lyrically, the composition combines the violent with the sensual: “Nightmare seems so real, and yet, it’s getting weirder, and my bed is wet.” Russell sounds clear on the words, occasionally at the expense of the keyboards which nestle beneath the shrill shrieks and whispers.
Unabashed Anglophiles, the siblings let out their innate English leanings on the achingly beautiful “Drowned in a Sea of Tears”, affecting a chorus worthy of Paul McCartney. “Lord Have Mercy” melds electronic instruments with wooden ones, a frenetic and steady noise collage spread across four minutes.
Measured on its own individual terms, “Don’t Dog It” is the most successful excursion, as it utilizes symphonic coated synthesizers, jazz chimes, and a wall of harmonies that evoke the spirit of Fleet Foxes. A melange bolstered by spirit and bonhomie, “Don’t Dog It” switches from ambience, incorporating a collection of genres in the time it takes a single to play on the radio. The sophisti-pop grooves on “JanSport Backpack”, conversely, feel like an unfortunate throwback to a time when heightened French accents were slapped on top of records that did not need them (think 10cc’s “Une Nuit a Paris”.)
If “Daylight” is meant to continue the narrative spun on “Beat the Clock”, it fails, but Mad! picks up the pace when “A Long Red Night” appears, a quasi-Mike Oldfieldian organ banger that should be played at Halloween. Ron’s musical ingenuity plays out on “A Long Red Night”, as he experiments with the various functions on his keyboard. “It’s certainly been a long red night,” Russell sings, once again joined by an ensemble of harmonies.
How does Mad! stand in their canon of 21st-century output? It lacks the surprises of FFS, a one-off produced beside Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand, and there is an allure to their Annette soundtrack that is absent here. However, Mad! makes a concerted effort to release interesting music at this point in their career. The duo could have sat on their laurels following the release of the warts-and-all documentaryThe Sparks Brothersand produced a rock-heavy work that would appeal to the fans. Still, to their credit, the Mael brothers have gone a different direction and issued something more cerebral.
Sparks are ready to hone their sound further with a forthcoming tour, this time for a live audience. The combination of old favourites and new discoveries should be more digestible in a theatre, where history sits in front, behind, and apart from the music being conducted on the stage in front of them.
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