LISTENING TO - Mad! by Sparks

Those regular readers of my blog will know I'm a lifelong fan of Sparks. Sparks over the last two decades have been on a pretty consistent run of excellent and innovative albums since Lil' Beethoven in 2002. One would expect that at least there'd be the occasional duffer. So I approached this their 28th album with a certain amount of trepidation. Well, some of Mad! feels a bit substandard, but not all of it,. For me it comes down to the variable quality of the song writing. With not enough of the ironic wit and pizzazz from Ron on show. The worst tracks on this album are strangely when they conform too closely to their own cliches. 

Their album before this The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte from 2023, was such a consistently good album, with hardly a bad track on it. So one wonders what creative shift they were aiming for here and slightly missed.

Some of Mad! demonstrates how one songwriters strengths can easily slip into being their most glaring faults. Ron Mael has always had the ability to turn the simplest line of lyric into an urgent musical exploration of a songs theme, by the often manic use of repetition. This goes back, at least as far as My Baby's Taking Me Home  off Lil Beethoven. He uses this minimalist technique to great effect on what turns out to be Mad!'s best and opening track - Do Things My Own Way - and later on on the delightful  A Long Red Light.. But then it is used to some degree on almost every track here. So you get Drowned In A Sea Of Tears, or Jan Sport Backpack which just end up being really irritating. A person wearing a Jan Sport Backpack keeps walking away, is lyrically and musically dull as ditch water. Bereft of any sense of irony or the tongue in cheek witticisms that might elevate this into something truly special. On previous albums, just listen to Lawnmower or Escalator to see at their best what they can do with an equally simple scenario. Jan Sport Backpack, is severely lacking in that sort of quality.

They appear to have, temporarily we hope, lost their usual firm grasp and astute ear for social and cultural phenomena to wittily lampoon. Its also the slim beer of its musical innovation too. This album feels, in comparison to their recent oeuvre, a tad complacent. So much of the art pop arena that they've single-handedly carved out for themselves, has thrived on the interplay between the gently acerbic nature of their lyrics and the musical risks that they've been prepared to take. They appear to have chosen to pare back the degree of adventurousness. At times it just ends up producing a blandly anodine song like - Lord Have Mercy. This has all the annoying 'wave your hands in the air' quality's of a Cliff Richard Christmas No 1. And no, this is not written ironically!

Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab is a great song title. I suspect Ron came up with that title first and then had to write around it. It ought to be a wonderful satirical send up of celebrity culture. Though undoubtedly a catchy song, it relies yet again on a lot of repetition of that title over a Dwayne Eddy style guitar riff.  Once upon a time this would have been a tighter, much more sharply written song lyrically. It gets by purely on the mood it conjures up, which is still great with a capital G. 

Having said all that, Mad! has a lot about it that is enjoyable. The song My Devotion does literally start off sounding like the most twee sentimental song possible, full of the fresh naivety of first love that you can imagine, its all -

My devotion to you is about all that I do
Got your name written on my shoe
And I'm thinkin' of gettin' a tattoo

But then halfway through Russell sings counter point over the main song with a vocal line that tells you how they feel now -

Through all the years  Rent in arrears
You never cared  Can't help but stare
You've never changed  Hair rearranged
That, though, is all  Time seemed to stall

Now that is the sort of unexpected twist in the tail you do expect of Sparks.

A Little Bit Of Light Banter is one great romp of a song. Given a musical style that Ron Mael is very fond of returning to- the vaudeville song. This is one of those routines with a long established relationship he easily settles into. Sparks have been coming up with this type of song since Reinforcements on the album Propaganda. Idiosyncratic certainly, but these days its hardly breaking new boundaries. Nonetheless this an infectious simple hearted show tune that I'm sure will be very popular live.

Just a little bit of light banter and then we say goodnight

Just a little bit of light banter and the we turn off the light

Each days a day of sorrow, we each bemoan our plight

But night is a different story and oh it feels oh so right

Its a really really deep connection, we do it every night

With a little bit of light banter, and then we turn off the light.

I find it significant that the songs they chose not to pre-release before the whole album was available, are in fact the more interesting tracks musically. 

In Daylight - is one beautifully sparse song, a highlight of the album

A Long Red Light - spookily discordant strings and all, l'm completely in love with this track.

Hit Me Baby - sung over a strongly propulsive opening stick rhythm, this is a terrifically well constructed track, that catches you off guard every time with yet another new development. 

I -405 Rules - all semi-operatic theatrically dramatic strings about to go completely off kilter any moment. Yeah, its fun. But its essentially Dick Around revisited. As if you needed to hear it twice, with less effect.. 

Don't Dog It - It's a crazy ride of a tune, couldn't tell you what its about really. 

So Mad! feels a tad disappointing, often infuriatingly inconsistent, some truly great stuff, alongside the really substandard. Let down occasionally by not just minimalist lyric writing, but poor song craft from Ron Mael. Its almost as though he exhumed these rejected songs from his bottom draw, accepting the challenge to make something of them despite their poor quality.

CARROT REVIEW - 4/8

PS. On further reflection I feel I am being quite unfair here, in overstating the problems with this album. I think I'm holding them to a standard that its actually quite hard for any band, let alone one on its 28th album, to meet. But, that is also a consequence of the cross they've made for themselves to bare.  So maybe I ought to be more forgiving.