Album Review:   Sparks – A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip  (BMG)

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At the 50-plus year mark of making parallel world Pop Art Prog Rock, the brothers Ron Mael and Russell Mael take us on a theatrical journey of music packed with humour and philosophy, most of which you can dance to and feel moved.

Coming from Palisades Park, California, they were immersed in the plethora of rapidly-evolving West Coast style of Sixties music. They sounded completely Anglophile at the beginning, in the Summer of Love in 1967. Not Rock’n’Roll by any means. Cult followings with breakouts into the mainstream from time to time.

This time around and into their seventh decade of life and they are best thought of as the perfect blend of David Bowie and the great Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.

All That has a faux lounge jazz tenor sax opening before an acoustic guitar and keyboard pick up the pace immediately on an anthemic tune, which would easily make the grade on a Liam Gallagher show. Russell still has an undiminished wide-ranging voice.

I’m Toast opens with a Malcolm Young crunching electric rhythm guitar riff that powers along a theatrical lyric.

Lawnmower is a simple tune with a nagging little melody which is mysteriously addictive. Why has it taken so long to enter the collective consciousness of the psyche? We have the train and automobile as sexual metaphor and redemption.

The neighbours look on with awe at my lawnmower/ With jealousy and awe at my lawnmower/ I’m pushing, pushing, pushing/ My girlfriend is from Andover/ She puts up with my lawnmower.

Now I understand what the recurring lawnmowing dream signifies. This one also owes a debt to Laurie Anderson but I suspect there is a fair amount of influence the other way

Pacific Standard Time cycles back to a similar, uplifting anthemic song as the beginning. Then we have a brace of songs which are light operatic, Gilbert and Sullivan style.

Stravinskys Only Hit is multi-voiced, baroque music. Bohemian Rhapsody with a lighter touch and lots of humour.

Left Out in the Cold has a solid galloping rhythm with an ethereal floating keyboard and chimes. A Beach Boys sounding vocal chorus coming straight out of the Smile sessions.

Self-Effacing is more theatrical light opera, but the song moves along at a fast clip with little keyboard riffs packed into it. Great drumming throughout.

IPhone begins with a techno keyboard on a song about modern relationships from a pair of elderly gents observed at a distance. Adam has things he wants to get off his chest.

Put your fucking iPhone down and listen to me.

The Existential Threat is light and bouncy with Klezmer style European café arrangements.

Nothing Travels Faster Than the Speed of Light. More serious and spiritual. But with added B’52s musical quirks to keep it light and engaging.

The album a totally idiosyncratic piece of work. And from brothers who have been doing this for half a century.

Please Don’t Fuck Up my World. Abbey Road Beatles when they were together only in music. Violins, cellos, a piano refrain resembling Let It Be. The song is a plea to the environment, and for people to come together in such a difficult time. So, they have cycled back to the Summer of Love. The more things change…

A children’s chorus sing: Please don’t fuck up my world/ It’s all that I’ve got/ All God’s children are singing/ Can’t you see what you’re doing.

Rev Orange Peel

    

Rev Orange Peel
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