[…continued from last post]

I was immediately enraptured by the formalist fortissimo of “I-405 Rules.” An almost Rococo, orchestrally driven expansion of their “L’il Beethoven®” ethos as resulting in a paean to their local Interstate highway. The subtlety of the glockenspeil here somehow managed to cast the dominant string in shadow. There was a little bit of a Rock band tucked away in the margins of the song, but they knew their places! The huge expenditure of effort on the most prosaic of topics here was a Sparks calling card if ever there were one! The song is just the thing for fans of the approach they brought to “Dick Around.”

Then they had the brilliance to follow it with an even more beloved song! “A Long Red Light” is my big favorite here as I love the stately orchestral sawing away whilst the minimal synths in the intro contrast boldly with the rest of the sonic palette. This one actually could have been on “L’il Beethoven®” as a room full of Russells examine the unbelievable tension inherent in…what else, a looooooong red light. The chorus here was simply “wait” repeated thirteen times per bar. I cannot listen to it without laughing at the audacity of it all.

“Drowned In A Sea Of Tears” was a song that had the confidence to run with the piano and acoustic guitar to serve up the bittersweet lyric. The acoustic guitar was also front and center in the more typically Sparksian [is that a word?] confection that was “A Little Bit of Light Banter.” I really should be sick of this song because whenever I plug my personal device into my car’s USB port to charge, or to hear the maps talking on the sound system, instead every song on it plays in alphabetical order, so I hear “A Little Bit of Light Banter” and awful lot! That said, I find its sentiments [a song in praise of bantering, one of my favorite pastimes!] not only enthralling, but I loved the way they cast shade on our larger culture in doing so with the following lyric.

“We may talk about art, music
Or movies without guns
Or knives or assorted weapons
We’ll chat until we are done”

A Little Bit of Light Banter

The concluding “Lord Have Mercy” was a delicate ballad that dared to close the album on a surprisingly Beatlesque note, though the concluding guitar solo certainly sat outside of that walled garden.

MADDER! EP

Sparks: Madder! – UK – CD EP [2025]

1. Porcupine
2. Fantasize
3. Mess Up
4. They

The intro to “Porcupine” suggested minimal Synthpop, before the guitars, drums, and synth horn hook blew up the quirky number into something larger. The real payload, were the lyrics of self-delusional one-way romance that allowed us to read between the lines and marvel. As with many Sparks songs, only the Maels could write material like this.

“Fantasize” was perhaps the one half-baked song on the two discs. The arrangement was Minimalism by-the-numbers coupled with a lyric that flirted with mediocrity from the same pen capable of delivering “I Thought I Told You To Stay In The Car?” Fortunately, it didn’t overstay its welcome.

As compensation, “Mess Up” proceeded to deliver another stone-cold Sparks classic. The lurching, galloping rhythm was a stunner. One can easily imagine all sorts of imaginative choreography to this song. A trait that only Sparks seem to deliver. But the lyrics were a laff-riot as well as they examined the myriad ways in which the titular event could manifest. Opening with a howler of an first verse.

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“Busting in on a new roommate
Banging your beautiful Zoommate
Lookin’ a lot like a mess up, mess up”

Mess Up

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My only disappointment with the track was where they failed to have a overdubbed drum breakdown where those multiplexed drums would have gotten a few bars to have the spotlight to themselves. [see: “Port Of Amsterdam” by The Nits for inspiration]

The closer, “They,” was a fascinating, crystalline song about the audience [you know… the same “They” who “say” things] who would come to see a dancer but ultimately leave in a cloud of disappointment at what was delivered. The juxtaposition of Swinging 60s dance craze moves with points of Terpsichorean reference like Bejart and Balanchine only served to heighten “their” snobbery.

The irony was delicious when served over acoustic guitars strummed with all of the gravity one could could possibly muster. The chorale of multiplexed Russels accented with strategic tambourines would attain a kind of Bolero-like majesty here. Majesty certainly augmented by fifty Russels singing the middle eight in a [gasp!] lower resister.

Sparks have arrived, after over fifty years of diligent toil at a place where their arsenal of songwriting weaponry is much broader than most groups. Their late-in-the-game breakthrough of “L’il Beethoven®” is still issuing creative dividends over twenty years later as evidenced by this latest batch of songs. Some of which clearly call back to the earlier opus.

Sadly, I only just got “A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip” earlier this year, and I have not seen a copy of “The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte” on anything but the licorice pizza. I’ve yet to buy a copy. So it’s difficult to get a sense of the continuity and growth snaking through their last near-decade as the brothers march toward their ninth decade on this planet. It is a formidable and perhaps singular journey they’re on. If there are a handful of less than fully sparkling tunes on “Mad!” then at least the bulk of the songs were properly inspirational. With another handful being touched by greatness.

When faced with fashioning an album from the recorded material they had laid down for “Mad!” the mostly strong cast-offs managed to make an EP that was a treat in and of itself. Especially one that followed on the heels of the “Mad!” album by only four months. As a record collector, I appreciated that these songs had a physical release on record and CD.

In the 90s, undoubtedly there would have been a single 16 track “Mad!” album with all of these cuts on a single disc. At over 60 minutes of length. Where the excess of it all would have seen me perhaps discount the work, as I did with Cure albums of the 90s which lost me after the 40 minute mark.

As The Brothers prepare their next cinematic musical [with John Woo directing] we should be happy that they still deign to play the “Rock game” with as much gusto as they certainly do, while they could be getting the Big Hollywood checks that make Rock look like the piker’s game that it is. That they can use the longform musical as well as the Rock album formats to reinforce and inform one another as they do points to their artistic rigor and bearing as scholars and artists. I fear we’ll not see the likes of them again so let’s cherish them while we may.

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