SPARKS

[Henry McHenry]

Do Things and DITSOT are good tracks
but rest feels like half baked mishmash plus singalong songs ...
and I do hate "Schlager"

[dinky]

[SteveBoyce]

[dinky]

Daily Telegraph


Sparks, Mad!, review: eccentric brilliance with pearls of wisdom
The world’s most successful and furiously productive cult act are at their best with this theatrical album of operatic synth-pop bangers


5/5


Since they first properly struck gold with 1974’s piano-pounding art-glam romp, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us, Ron and Russell Mael’s “band”, Sparks (its personnel has long since consisted of just the two of them), has been an ever-present gold standard for left-field pop – perhaps the world’s most successful cult act.

High points along the way have included 1979’s Giorgio Moroder-produced New Wave/disco hit machine No.1 In Heaven and 1994’s synth-pop primer Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins, but perhaps the most extraordinary twist in the tale of this fraternal odd couple from Los Angeles, ever beloved in the UK, is that, now well into their late 70s, their last three non-conceptual studio albums – Hippopotamus (2017), A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (2020) and 0223’s The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (2023) – all by some remarkable coincidence hit Number Seven on the British charts.


They’ve remained furiously productive since the millennium, managing to squeeze in 2015’s collaborative record with superfans Franz Ferdinand (‘FFS’), a radio opera (2009’s The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman), a film musical (2021’s Annette, which won them a César from Best Original Score), but this 28th studio album in their labyrinthine career surely delivers what most Sparks fans want from them most – a barrage of the kind of eccentric yet immediately connective synth-pop bangers, which only Chaplin-moustached keyboard maestro Ron Mael, now 79, seems capable of writing, and which Russell, 76, his sky-scraping high notes miraculously uneroded by passing time, delivers with characteristic theatrical gusto.

If Mael Sr majors in operatic pop ditties with laugh-out-loud librettos of interpersonal observation and pop-cultural referencing, Mad! is veritably bulging at the seams with them. It opens with the pulsing electro assertion of Do Things My Own Way, a new anthem, perhaps, for Sparks’s pathological idiosyncrasy.


Further on, the glacially product-placing JanSport Backpack hilariously satirises our contemporary fixation with brand identity, often in preference over what’s actually going on around us, or to us. More laughs beckon on Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab (oh, that craving to spend indiscriminately at a pricey boutique establishment!). Best of all, maybe, My Devotion offers a wonderfully goofy snapshot of unrequited love bordering on obsession: “my devotion to you is all that I do,” gamely chirps Russell, over infectiously tootling synth lines, “Got your name written on my shoe, and I’m thinkin’ of getting’ a tattoo!” He goes on, a tad creepily if he didn’t sound so genuinely smitten: “Through all the years/Rent in arrears/You never cared/Can’t help but stare”!

More relationship insecurity surfaces on In Daylight, which serves up the wisdom, doubtless accrued beneath unforgiving LA sunshine, “Everybody looks great at night/Ain’t no trick to look great at night”, before our narrator approaches a radiant apparition to deliver the ultimate LA compliment, “You were impressive in day light, I saw you/Sunlight oppressive, but it’s working for you”, then succumbs to a dose of “we are not worthy”: “I can’t approach you since daylight reveals me/So I’ll just wait for the night to conceal me”.

Like many of pop’s greatest songsmiths, Ron Mael has a rare talent for writing lyrics which you instantly imagine applying or indeed singing in real-life conversations with fellow Mad! enthusiasts. Over circling psychodrama strings-synth, A Long Red Light, for example, brilliantly captures the stress of awaiting a change from those traffic signals which seem to be on a far more patient time-loop than all the others around town. I can just imagine singing this one to myself, the next time I’m stopped at a particular junction on my route back from Central London.

For all their lifelong weirdness, Sparks are always real enough to invade your daily reality, as all great pop does, in singalongs of collectively amusing phraseology, set to memorable melodies. As such, another Number Seven, or higher, surely awaits.

[Henry McHenry]

Mad! Track by track by Far OUT



‘Do Things My Own Way’: After a stabbing, hooking introduction, the second the lyrics and vocals come in, the song loses speed, stumbling on the cliche of the titular lyric. [2/5]

‘JanSport Backpack’: Childish and odd, there is some charm here, but once again, the album’s lyrics let it down. “Why do you keep watching away? Oh, why do you treat me this way?” The band clearly got a rhyming dictionary. [1/5]

‘Hit Me, Baby’: Better than the ones before, but still not enough. There is nothing interesting here, nothing all that theatrical or fun. It’s just okay. [2/5]

‘Running Up The Tab At The Hotel For The Fab’: The development of the instrumental here is good, hooking into the same kind of strange, sleazey seduction of something like Pulp’s ‘This Is Hardcore’ but again, it’s let down by the lyrics that seem to try to be funny but just aren’t. [2/5]

‘My Devotion’: A complete switch of tone and pace is more than welcome, but as becomes a theme here, the second the vocals and lyrics come in, it falls apart as Russell Mael sounds, and I hate to say it, bad. [1.5/5]

‘Don’t Dog It’: Mael leaning into a more theatrical talk-singing style here helps, thank god. [2/5]

‘In Daylight’: This track feels somewhat like an interlude; it’s peaceful and calm, genuinely quite beautiful. [3/5]

‘Rules’: And they ruined it. Mael’s voice just can’t pull this off anymore as it’s lost its ability to pull off whimsy without sounding unironically poor. [1/5]

‘A Long Red Light’: A pattern emerges that the album is at its best when they go all in on experimentation, rather than trying to make a good song that descends into cringeworthy. [2/5]

‘Drowned In A Sea Of Tears’: If Sparks weren’t Sparks, a song like this would be posted on one of those Instagram meme pages that make fun of bad bands. [1.5/5]

‘A Little Bit Of Light Banter’: I keep being fooled by intriguing introductions leading to songs that make you want to skip them. [1.5/5]

‘Lord Have Mercy’: I’m so glad this is over and I can be free of Mael’s voice. [1.5/5]

[Physicality]

[Deano]

These are joke numbers for these tracks.Not one track above 3 out of 5.Why pick out the worst review you can see online? Go on be a devil and post some of the more favourable reviews.You know you want to really.....

[Henry McHenry]

the two recent
reviews might be too extreme ...the 5/5 and the 2/5
maybe it is 3/5...

[Henry McHenry]

[Crabby]

So.....I've listened to MAD a few times now.....and l'm really glad that l didn't listen much to the singles when they came out. They sound quite different in the context of the whole album.

I think trying to review music objectively is a thankless and impossible task (and God forbid ,giving songs marks out of 10....no,no,no)
It's such a personal emotional art form...there are no 'right' answers.
If it's something you don't like then no amount of rational argument will make you like it and that's how it should be. (Appreciating it is a different matter all together)

In the final analysis what matters is....Do l like this? Will l listen again?

Well.....l like this album....l REALLY like this....and just when l thought l had a handle on what Sparks might do next....they do this!!!

Bravo! 😃

[Deano]

Playing online tracks through a laptop or even worse a phone will never get close to listening to the album from start to end on a nice turntable or CD player with a decent amp and speakers.The LP sounds really punchy and nice on my set up and the CD sounds even better.

[Henry McHenry]

[Brightonian]

[Deano]

Very pleased for you Henry

[Brightonian]

[Henry McHenry]

I still like DTMOW and Drowned ...and A long Red Light...
and some of the other songs have got good moments ..

[Crabby]

We all have different opinions on music ,that's what makes it great...

[deadcalm]

Bit disappointed with the Guitar solo on the last track "Lord have Mercy" . Maybe cause Ron hinted at it so was expecting a really long screamer . Not quite Hackett style but something more intense . Yeah can see why they released those particular single tracks early. Not played it straight through yet to check the total flow of the whole album, the singles and more experimental stuff melded together.
_________________
I Think that went very Well

[Ruud]

https://www.fanmael.nl/album-reviews/mad

[Brightonian]