So-called “cult” bands can be intimidating to get into. Not only do they usually have large discographies, but new listeners are also likely to encounter longtime fans with extremely strong opinions of which of the band's albums (or eras) is the best. Whenever this happens, my advice is to just dive in head first. That’s not difficult to do in the case of Sparks.
The Los Angeles-based Sparks, formed by brothers Ron Mael (keyboards) and Russell Mael (vocals), have been releasing records and touring the world since 1971. Their 28th album, MAD!, is out now, and to me it sounds like classic Sparks. When I spoke to Ron and Russell, though, I wasn’t too surprised when they (gently) pushed back on the whole concept of a “classic Sparks” sound.
“It's hard to know exactly what classic Sparks means,” said Russell. “We obviously wanted to retain all of the personality and character and idiosyncrasies that the band has, and have elements of the universe that Sparks has created, but to hopefully approach it in a fresh way, and that if people maybe are just hearing this album for the first time and have no knowledge of Sparks, that it doesn't sound like it's from a band with a 28-album-long history.”
“I think Sparks fans, too, are ones that kind of also relish that they don't know what to expect,” said Russell. “They want to be surprised and want to have something that's maybe not exactly what they were thinking it would be.”
“We're really lucky to have an audience that wants to be challenged,” said Ron. “They don't want a repetition from the past.”
One song on the album, “Drowned In a Sea of Tears,” could be considered a departure for Sparks in an unexpected way.
“A lot of times people kind of think of Sparks as lacking sincerity in what (we’re) doing,” said Ron. “(The audience) enjoys what we're doing, but they think there's always kind of a smirk going on, which you know we're never approaching things in that way ... People can enjoy our songs in any way they want, but this (song) is really a kind of an overt attempt to do a song that's really done from the standpoint of pure sincerity.”
“And so, you know, if you're looking for an underlying, ‘snarky’ kind of feeling, that isn't there,” said Ron. “It was really trying to write a really high quality, sincere song about, you know, just the tragedy of justice, a relationship and another person, but doing it in a way that isn't generic. That's always really important to us, that whatever we do, whether we're writing things that are more humorous or done from a more serious tone, that it isn't generic either lyrically or musically.”
Nobody would suggest that another song on the album, “I-405,” is serious in tone, but in its own way the song is a love letter to a part of Los Angeles that doesn’t get a lot of love.
“If you haven't driven on I-405, stay that way,” said Ron. “Experience it only through our song, because it's kind of a nightmare, actually. But there's a museum on the hill. Getty Museum. And if you look down on I-405 at rush hour in the evening, from that museum on a hill, it has a certain beauty. And so the song is trying to kind of make a connection between the beauty of our nightmarish freeway drive, and how that can be kind of seen in the same light as as the great rivers of Europe, the Danube and even the Sumitomo Sumida River in Tokyo. It's all in how you view things.”
“The details in the songs, that's something I think that's really always been important to us,” said Ron. “It's why when we first started, we always loved the lyrics of bands like The Who and The Kinks, where it wasn't like some general comment about something. It was about, you know, ‘Mary Ann with a shaky hand’ or getting a tattoo, or about a description of a place in England that was very specific. So many songs, I mean they're great songs all the time, but they're just a general statement about something. And we prefer that kind of level of detail — that a person can make an assumption that there is not maybe an underlying kind of subject behind you know, just what is presented there literally.”
But later on the album, Sparks subverts expectations yet again with the very literal “A Long Red Light.”
“Some people have asked us, ‘Is it, you know, a metaphor for something else that I'm missing?’ No. It's about someone sitting in a long red light and being incredibly frustrated at having to wait there,” said Russell. “And I think it becomes almost like this opera in a certain way, of relaying that situation over and over lyrically over three and a half minutes, but it kind of evolves over time and becomes really kind of almost symphonic and operatic towards the end of the piece, and it takes on a different kind of meaning.”
For my part, I couldn’t help but think of another Sparks song: “My Baby’s Taking Me Home,” which is also mostly the same lyrics over and over, but still gets even more powerful the longer it goes.
Sparks is heading to London this weekend, where they’ll be doing a Q&A session at the Union Chapel with British comedian Rob Brydon. Then in June, they’re heading back to play some shows. London is where Sparks began to build their following when they were starting out, so in a way it’s like going home for them.
“The British, for whatever reason, kind of embraced Sparks first, and so whenever we go there, the shows are usually really crazy and wild,” said Russell. “And this year will be the same as last year or two years ago when we did our last tour. We played two nights at the Royal Albert Hall and it was something that was really so special for us being Anglophiles, and this time it's going to be equally crazy.”
The new Sparks album, MAD!, is available today, and they’ve already embarked on their next project: a movie musical set to be directed by the legendary action director John Woo. Speaking of movies, if you haven’t seen the documentary The Sparks Brothers, it’s an absolute “must-watch” for all music fans. Just be ready to have “My Baby’s Taking Me Home” stuck in your head for a week.
