Sparks’ twenty-eighth studio album is gratingly repetitive but finds small pops of fun in characteristic genre play.
Ron and Russell Mael are back with their twenty-eighth studio album MAD, out this May. The brothers have been making music together since 1967; in that time they were varyingly ignored by American audiences, mentored and produced by the legendary Todd Rundgren, moved to London, shared a manager with Bob Dylan and found a breakout in the UK with “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” in 1974.
They’ve drifted from 70s punk and art rock to 80s synth to 90s techno to chronically-offbeat electronic opera – roaming that resulted in predictably scattershot critical and popular reception. Recently, they’ve seen a renewed wave of appreciation since the 2021 documentary chronicling their seven-decade career, The Sparks Brothers.
In a discography chock full of both hits and misses, their latest entry comes to feel like a miss—with some pleasing curveballs thrown in.
Lead single and opener “Do Things My Own Way” is the clear banner event of the record. It evokes LCD Soundsystem, CAKE and Talking Heads – “evokes” rather than “sounds like” is an important distinction here, since, to paraphrase Phoebe Bridgers, Sparks was a band when some of those artists were born. “My Own Way” is Sparks at its best: apathetic vocals, punk lyrics and growling production swim into a shapeshifting mirage of new wave, punk and post punk revival. It sounds like a film character’s strutted entrance; vocalist Russell sings “My advice? No advice. Gonna do things my own way” over and over.
“Over and over” works on a track with the gumption of “Do Things My Own Way.” Not every track on this record is lucky enough to have that gumption — but all share its structure: the titular phrase repeated constantly for the duration of the track. That device is funny on “JanSport Backpack,” which sounds like the Beach Boys (RIP) were haunted and wrings some humor out of a creepy-baroque obsession with a mundane, generic school bag. But by “A Long Red Light,” it’s grating.
What keeps the record halfway afloat is its instrumental experimentation: a cluster of tracks share the same haunted mansion feeling that probably works for listeners who are super into the Addams family but grows sticky otherwise. However, other songs break the mold: “In Daylight”’s watery reverb synth sounds like Lorde’s Melodrama and conjures its same feeling of the sun peacefully rising after a long night out. “Hit Me Baby”’s machine gun drums and shredding guitars are solid rock. Sparks consider themselves quite the satirists but what actually works on this record are moments of soft sincerity: “In Daylight,” and “Drowned in a Sea of Tears,” both of whose quiet warmth stick out as reprieves from the intense candelabra energy of the rest of MAD.
Sparks will successfully play with genre and less-successfully attempt biting satire for the rest of their lives – and they should. It’s of course refreshing to see legacy artists insist on creating new stuff. On this record, one just wishes they left some of that new stuff to Brian David Gilbert’s Halloween covers album AAAH!BBA.
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