MAD! by Sparks review: 'fresh and audacious'
Ron and Russell Mael may have been in the music business for five decades now, but you’d never think it to listen to their latest album, writes Fiona Shepherd
From where does Sparks elixir of creativity spring? The Mael brothers reach their 28th studio album sounding as fresh and audacious as they did 50 years ago. According to Ron and Russell, their modus operandi is to imagine the album they should be making at their age and stage and then produce the exact opposite.
Thus, the onetime glam pop ingénues embrace lo-fi electro punk on MAD!’s opening track Gonna Do Things My Own Way with its garagey mantra, classic Sparks rhyming couplets and shooting synthesizers. Squint at it a certain way and it sounds like another provocative US duo, Suicide. Hit Me, Baby also uses a grungey punk sound, fuzz guitar, vaulting vocals and a strong percussive edge to make its latently political plea to wake up from a nightmare.
Ron remains dedicated to the art of writing a song about any old ephemera. JanSport Backpack is pure kitchen sink baroque, obsessing over said accessory, while 1-405 Rules is a curveball LA story, comparing the Californian highway to the great rivers of the world with urgent, melodramatic orchestral backing.
The wonderfully named Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab addresses the desperate horror show of influencer consumption with angry stabs of synthesizers before a dubby beat kicks in. Don’t Dog It offers philosophical bathos on the dancefloor (“shake it thusly and you’ll see the light”) but there are also moments of less quirky insight.
Drowned in a Sea of Tears looks back on a relationship, trying to make sense of a struggling partner with a mix of bewilderment and regret while A Little Bit of Light Banter has fun with the art of communication in a long-term relationship. Best of all, they finish with a lighter-waving power pop prayer, Lord Have Mercy. Amen to all that.
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