There are certain time-tested traditions for gauging the prevailing winds in pop music. Following the career of Sparks is assuredly not one of them. For the past three and a half decades, the Mael brothers - vocalist Russell, keyboardist/mad sonic scientist Ron - and a rotating cast of cohorts have either been too far ahead of the musical curve to count as trendsetters or too far off the grid to be considered influential on a broad scale. And that’s just the way they like it.
From hints at hypercaffeinated new wave in the ’70s (particularly Kimono My House and Propaganda) to disco legitimacy (with No. 1 in Heaven) and pure rock thunder (Angst in My Pants) in the ’80s to the techno blend (Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins) of the ’90s on to the sonic experimentalism of the new century, the Maels have been blazing utterly distinctive trails that few have followed and fewer still have been capable of comprehending. So how does one of the most original bands of the rock era stay on its own singular cutting edge? They started by throwing out their own rulebook. Five years ago, when the Maels began work on their then new album, they took the unprecedented step of dropping all the songs they’d recently written.
“When you write something, it becomes precious to you,� says frontman Russell Mael from his hotel room during a recent London tour stop. “To just abandon those songs in the quest of something that would have a bolder approach; we just had to make that move.�
Even after 35 years in the music business, the Maels weren’t so complacent to believe that their next album was a foregone conclusion. One of the reasons for their incredible longevity is the careful consideration that the pair give to the making and presentation of their music. “Another album of just songs by Sparks, we thought, was going to be not very satisfying, either for us or for the people that we needed to convince that Sparks is really vital,� says Mael. “So we wanted to come up with an angle that was more undeniable as far as being something really fresh, even for us.�
With no material in hand, the Maels combined the writing and recording aspects of their creative process, which forced them to think about their work in a completely new way. The result was 2002’s thoroughly unique Lil Beethoven, with Sparks reimagining pop music in a symphonic atmosphere. The intent, according to Mael, wasn‘t necessarily to do something symphonic, but to “do away with other more conventional pop instruments. When you do that, then you have to figure out what you can replace them with to retain some of the aggression of those instruments. We thought using orchestral instruments but in a really strident way could compensate for the lack of drums and guitars in places. We used the voice a lot to also serve as a sharp kind of sound.�
Mozart was the rock star of his day, so adrenalized symphonics aren’t exactly a new idea, but Sparks put a magnificent contemporary spin on the concept while applying their own unique signature to the proceedings. While the band considered the album a personal success and the critical response was encouraging (an entertaining DVD, Live in Stockholm, was released not long after), sales lagged behind expectations. When the Maels entered their Los Angeles studio in 2003 to work on the follow-up to Lil Beethoven, they recognized that they’d hit on an excellent blueprint that needed just a little minor tweaking.
“We were just trying to find a way to continue in that same vein because we really liked what we did with Lil Beethoven, but we felt it was underexposed as far as the masses were concerned,� says Mael. “We didn’t want to abandon that whole approach but then we didn’t want to do an album that sounded like Lil Beethoven. We just tried to make use of some of the techniques that we came up with for that album but hopefully taken to another level.�
For their new album, the Maels once again started from scratch, effectively combining their writing and recording phases. After committing to more guitar and drums, the brothers spent most of the next two years working on what would eventually become the 20th album of their 35-year career, Hello Young Lovers. “There were a couple of times we went to England to do one-off shows but basically it was over two years,� explains Mael. “There’s no separation now between writing and recording - it’s all kind of done at the same time - so each song took longer or shorter depending on the nature of it. A song like ‘Dick Around’ took about five months to record; it was a really lengthy process. Some of the others were shorter, but each one took at least a month to do.�
Sparks songs have always had a cinematic, visual feel to them, but with the last two albums, Sparks’ films seem more epic than ever before. Hello Young Lovers offers significantly more guitar and drums than its orchestral predecessor, but the one constant through all of Sparks’ stylistic shifts over the years has been the Maels’ wry lyrical cheek, in full evidence here as always (the aforementioned first single “Dick Around,� “There’s No Such Thing as Aliens,� and “As I Sit to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral�).
While Sparks has been widely dismissed over the years as little more than a novelty act, the band’s sustained history and periodic successes refute that assessment. As for the band’s most recent output, the ground that Lil Beethoven broke three years ago has proven very fertile for Hello Young Lovers, as the new album has become one of the most acclaimed albums of their career. The brothers are clearly pleased at the way the new album is being perceived as well as the reexamination that is being afforded to their entire catalog.
“It’s almost a statement or a doctrine of sorts going counter to a lot of what’s happening in pop music now,� says Russell Mael in a statement that could easily apply to the band’s full history. “It flies in the face of convention and everything you’re supposed to accept as being a part of pop music. The song structures are not conventional, songs don’t have to have verses and choruses and middle eights, and they don’t have to be three and a half minutes long. The lyrics, even when they’re dealing with subject matters that are mundane, the treatment of those subjects are not mundane at all. We think those elements make it really stand out. Pop music now is really tired sounding, even the things that are supposed to be new and young and exciting. They’re young, I can give them that, but they’re not so exciting.�
