On their incomparable new album, Sparks protest predictability, obliterate the ordinary and demand utmost respect. Hello Young Lovers is cinematic, bold, and lyrically liberal, with moments of sheer beauty, dissonance and harmony. It may not win a Grammy, but an Oscar's not out of the question. Never, never, has there been an auditory assault of such magnitude presented in the realm of pop music. When Sparks' last album Lil'Beethoven hit the streets critics lauded and applauded, fans smiled sm   [ read more ]

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Thirty-seven years after their debut LP, Sparks release Exotic Creatures of the Deep, their 21st studio album. Recorded in their Los Angeles studio, brothers Ron and Russell Mael once again display their extraordinary ability to create, to challenge, and to confound. Should it be possible for two people to be so fresh, so vital, so unpredictable, and so incomparably individual? The result of a year spent in near-isolation, Exotic Creatures of the Deep could, perhaps, be seen as a nat   [ read more ]

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Introducing Sparks, originally released in 1977, is the seventh album by Sparks and the only one of their 20 long-players not available on CD. Until now-- the duo's own label, Lil' Beethoven Records, are putting it out. Finally, you can hear the much-discussed but rarely heard transitional album from Ron and Russell Mael's near-40-year career.

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LCD Soundsystem  Big Ideas, FM3  The Buddha Machine I, A Place to Bury Strangers  A Place to Bury Strangers

It may not have been the most natural match in music history, but the marriage of Sparks' focus on oddball pop songs to the driving disco-trance of Giorgio Moroder produced the duo's best album in years. From the chart hits "Number One Song in Heaven" and "Beat the Clock" to solid album tracks like "La Dolce Vita," No. 1 in Heaven surprises by succeeding on an artistic and commercial level despite the fact that neither the Mael brothers nor Moroder tempered their respective idiosyncr   [ read more ]

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Brothers Ron and Russell Mael have carved out a unique niche in the annals of pop music. Their ambitious brand of deviant candy has always straddled the line between sophistication and sleaze, reveling in its own cleverness while simultaneously infecting the listener with nihilistic bliss. Repertoire's The Best of Sparks, like the title suggests, is a career retrospective of the duo's work, albeit through 1984 -- this little tidbit should have been revealed somewhere on the outside packaging    [ read more ]

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By calling this 1977 release Introducing Sparks, the Mael siblings were being ironic -- this was their seventh album, and they were famous in England even though they only had a small following in their own country. The second of two albums that Sparks recorded for Columbia, Introducing Sparks gained a reputation for being its least essential album of the 1970s. To be sure, this LP isn't in a class with either Big Beat (Sparks' previous Columbia release) or Island gems such as {^P   [ read more ]

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Los Angeles legends and music innovators Sparks, best known in the States for their '80s hit "Cool Places" with Jane Wiedlin, has actually been around for nearly 30 years, consistently putting out records and developing a cult following. Precursors to electronica, synth-pop, and new wave, the brothers Ron and Russell Mael have inspired such varied acts as Ween, Fear, and They Might Be Giants. With an ironic, irreverent way of looking at the world reflected in their wordplay and drama   [ read more ]

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The third and mercifully last of Sparks' mid-'80s dance pop albums, the frankly disappointing Music That You Can Dance To delivered just two standouts: a remake of Russell Mael's European "Modesty Blaise" 45 and the epic 1985 single "Change" (replaced on British pressings by "Armies of the Night"). Indeed, "Change" isn't merely the album's most provocative number; it ranks among the duo's finest performances of all time, a shifting soundscape of sonics and moods through which {$Russe   [ read more ]

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What better way to promote Sparks' spinning blender of demented pop than Propaganda? The band's fourth album (and second with producer Muff Winwood) is chock-full of great ideas, including the overseas hits "Something for the Girl with Everything" and "Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth." With Russell Mael delivering the lyrics in his rapid-fire falsetto, the lyric sheet is a necessary compass, as the clever wordplay is a key to discovering what these pranksters are up to. Ron Mael   [ read more ]

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In the 1970s and '80s, Sparks' American fans couldn't understand why Ron and Russell Mael weren't as big in the United States as they were in England. "Why don't more of our fellow Americans realize just how great these guys are?" was the question that Sparks addicts in the U.S. often found themselves asking. Whatever the reason, British audiences really connected with Sparks' goofy, insanely clever lyrics -- and the fact that Russell Mael sings like he could be an eccentric upper-class En   [ read more ]

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Most of Big Beat finds Sparks doing what they do best: spewing out clever, mile-a-minute lyrics over solid rocking accompaniment (this time, provided by a superior group of studio musicians). Drummer Hilly Michaels and guitarist Jeffrey Salen lend Ron and Russell Mael's songs considerable rock & roll authority. Standouts include the opening blast "Big Boy" (which was featured in the film {#Rollercoaster}), the propulsive "Fill-Er-Up," and the falsetto-delivered proclamation {&"I L   [ read more ]

CD $17.08