MY MOST LOVED ALBUMS - Indiscreet by Sparks - 1975

Already a few years into their English renaissance, Indiscreet was Sparks third album in as many years.Still riding high on their first gallop of fame, they took this interestingly oblique left turn. A turn which presages pretty much everything they do subsequently. A form of creative pursuit of new musical terrain, that has become the guiding myth to their entire subsequent career. Indiscreet is the logistical first fully fledged blueprint for it. In which a wide and eclectic variety of styles and approaches to music making, will all exist within the one album. It was the first occasion when Sparks would draw near to self-sabotaging their fame, just by being too damned inventive and original for the conventions of the music business. That simply wanted them to produce more product, exactly like the last one, thank you.

One of the themes explored on this album is reflected in its title - Indiscreet. There is often a flavour of ideas, experiences and subjects being talked about here, that really are not normally aired via a pop song.  In Hospitality On Parade, its that serving other people you don't know, is a very public pretense, with a facade of hospitality that conceals a whole buried cache of resentments and vengeance. 

In, Without Using Hands, we have a song about the vacuous nature of international tourism that has a tragic denouement of a fatal explosion in the Ritz Hotel where 'the manager is going to live his entire life, without using hands'. Yeah, that one gets very dark, very suddenly. 

Under The Table With Her, is a song written like its a quartet chamber piece, about two children under a table at a posh banquet pretending to be dogs in order to be given scraps of food.

But other songs slowly build up to being edgy, like one of my top favorite Ron Mael songs - Tits. Two pals are sitting in a bar drinking. One guy is talking about how he cannot be intimate with his wife, since the birth of his child, because 'Tits are only there so they'll help our little Joe so that he'll grow. But as the song progresses, the two guys get ever more drunk, and the married guy starts to become paranoid about his wife's phone calls, and her fidelity, perhaps someone else is having an affair with her. Until in the next verse he accuses his bar friend of being the adulterous lover. The lyrics are conversational, and jump around subject matters and focus, as real conversations tend to do. Its a masterful piece of songwriting.

It Ain't 1918, is about a couple who refuse to embrace modern technology, and the social pressures on them to conform. 

The Lady Is Lingering, is a lovely song about a man who can't believe why a woman is hanging about near him. Is she or is she not interested in him? It captures the male perspective on whether he's reading or misreading the signals correctly. Whilst for the woman she's increasingly aware that 'its a risky business all this waiting and wandering'. Add in the hit songs Looks Looks Looks and Get In The Swing, and you have a hugely diverse range and styles of song here. Indiscreet is simply jam packed with musical and lyrical inventiveness and wit.  Its an entertaining and somewhat timeless album, that's still utterly fabulous.