Sparks: (L-R) Ron and Russell Mael.
credit: Munachi Osegbu
There’s a song from the new Sparks album MAD! that in some way perfectly sums up the 50-year-plus career of the legendary musical duo of brothers Russell and Ron Mael. With such lyrics as “Got the fuel/Broke the rules,” “My advice/No advice” and “I don’t care,” the track “Do Things My Own Way” speaks of the Maels’ philosophy of always following one’ own creative muse rather than what is commercially fashionable.
“When we did our first album with Todd Rundgren [for 1972’s Sparks], he always instilled in us, ‘Stick to your own vision,’” says singer Russell Mael. “‘Don’t veer off course because you’ve got an amazingly strong viewpoint and personality and character to what you do and don’t water it down.’” And so, we’ve kind of adopted that stance from the beginning. We really feel it’s important that you just stick to your creative impulses. So we feel that that song encapsulates that spirit.”
“Do Things My Own Way” is among the many standout songs on MAD!, Sparks’ 28th studio album and the Los Angeles-based duo’s debut release on the indie label Transgressive Records. The new record, due out this Friday, features the hallmarks of Sparks’ sound: a distinct amalgamation of eccentric lyrics and art rock.
Keyboardist Ron Mael says there’s no thematic concept going into making MAD!, as with a majority of Sparks’ previous albums. “We kind of start with the songs and see what the direction is,” he says, “and that’s kind of where we go. We hope that an album in the end makes some sense, even if it’s not something that can be really verbalized.”
Sparks’ songs have a strong cinematic aspect (more on that later), as heard on “JanSport Backpack,” another track unveiled ahead of the album’s release. The JanSport in the song serves as a visual symbol of a relationship in trouble.
“We spent quite a bit of time in Japan, and there were a lot of really stylish girls walking around with JanSport backpacks,” says Ron. “So you think, ‘Well, what song could be built around that particular image of seeing a girl from behind wearing a JanSport backpack?’ and making it like the sadness of a relationship that maybe isn’t quite working, and the JanSport backpack being the image of the girl walking away from you.”
The satirical nature of Sparks’ songs continues with the haunting and noirish “Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab,” which Ron says is about a not-so-financially-well-off guy who is trying to impress a girl. “He shows her a good time at a hotel that’s way beyond his means and goes through minibars and dinners and everything,” he says. “But in the end, he has to pay the price. And so he’s sent to Rikers. But he said it’s all worth it if she visits him in prison and he hopes he’ll be on parole soon. So it has a semi-happy ending.”
Not many artists would pay a homage or tribute to Los Angeles’ (and in general the country’s) busiest and congested freeway. But in the world of Sparks, the I-405, which serves as the title of a song from MAD!, serves as a symbol of city pride.
“It was kind of an ode to our freeway that, from certain vantage points, has a really beautiful quality to it,” Russell says, “especially at night, if you see all the taillights stuck bumper to bumper with each other in gridlock, it takes on its own beauty. So in a way, it’s our Seine River, our magical spot for an Angeleno.”
Another intriguing album track is the haunting operatic-like “A Long Red Light,” which is essentially a repetition of the lyric “a long red light.” “It was actually a literal intention,” Ron says, “but it can be viewed as like the hope that something will turn green in a more personal life kind of way with another person.”
“The intent, at least when it came up,” Russell adds, “was to make it more literal, that the frustration of sitting there at this red light. We like taking a really specific incident that everyone’s encountered, but turning it into something more than that.”
In a break from the duo’s usual irony, “Drowned in a Sea of Tears,” another of MAD!’s singles, is one of Sparks’ most dramatic and heartbreaking songs. Showcasing Russell’s falsetto singing, it also touches on a relationship at the crossroads.
“It is sincere and semi-tragic,” Russell says of the song’s story. “We did a video for it, too, that we think captured the mood really well of that relationship. [The woman and I in the clip] do a little quick sort of dance and then with a bunch of other more beautiful women in the background that fade off into the distance. And then she realizes that that was one of the happy moments they had together. Then it quickly ends as everybody fades away out of the image…and then she literally is drowning in a sea of tears in her car.”
MAD! ends on an uplifting note with “Lord Have Mercy,” the brothers’ favorite track from the album; Ron jokingly says it shows him being a softie at heart.
“It was one of the ones that was written in a more traditional way, where I just had the song and we brought it into the studio,” he recalls. “I had the title, but I couldn’t figure out a way not to be that we were preaching. So it was very hard to find a stance. And so I finally figured out that maybe if it’s somebody overhearing somebody else singing that song in a certain sense, then it would distance us from that.”
Sparks will be touring starting in June with dates in Japan and Europe, followed by stops in North America this September. In addition to their recording and touring work, the brothers have been busy getting their film project with legendary director John Woo, off the ground. It’s the brothers’ first cinema-related work since writing the screenplay and music for the 2021 movie musical Annette, directed by Leos Carax. The collaboration happened by chance when the Maels came across a Los Angeles Times piece in which Woo said he had always wanted to do a musical.
Says Russell: “We thought, ‘John Woo, a musical? That is really odd.’ And we said, ‘We’ve got to contact him’ — but then, thinking he probably won’t respond to what we do or our sensibility. He lives in L.A., which was fortunate. He came to our studio, sat through the whole two hours of the whole story, and said, ‘This is amazing. I want to do it.’ And we went, ‘Wow.’”
“We’ve been working with John Woo for the past year-and-a-half revising some elements of the screenplay that we wrote,” he also says. “But he’s so sold on the project and the music, which seems so unlikely that John Woo would respond to a Sparks musical. But when you’re with him, he’s so engaged in the project. It’s really exciting.”
The brothers’ experience with Annette was a confidence booster for them to continue on movie projects. “It’s such a dream for us,” says Ron, “because we are huge cinema buffs, to actually see something that you wrote on a screen. But also even the process of it is something that it’s totally different than working on your own record, where you’re the commander-in-chief of the whole thing.
“With a film,” he continues, “it’s such a collaborative process where you’re putting your trust into somebody who really has faith in something you wrote. And John Woo has come up with ideas and he’s such a visual person. So we really feel confident in being able to come through with the writing of the project.”
Sparks’ influence on future generations of musical artists (as discussed in the Edgar Wright 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers) continues: the British group the Last Dinner Party recently covered Sparks’ classic hit “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” from the duo’s 1974 album Kimono in My House .
“We read so much about them,” Russell says of the Last Dinner Party, “that so many reviews said, ‘Hey, there’s this group that sounds a lot of the spirit of Sparks.’ Then we checked them out and we really liked them. And so then we found out, in fact, they did “This Town.” It’s cool that there’s a group like that in the U.K. and that has been inspired to some extent by what we’ve done. It’s great.”
Sparks: (L-R) Russell and Ron Mael.
credit: Munachi Osegbu
After 50 years-plus, the musical partnership between Russell and Ron remains strong as ever — a rarity in the history of sibling musical acts mostly known for their tense relationships.
“We share a sensibility about things,” Ron says. “You can have discussions about individual sounds or whatever. But as far as the overall vision, it’s something that we have continued. It’s kind of unspoken now. It’s just something that we can read each other’s minds when we’re working on things.
“And maybe just in a more practical way, our roles within the band don’t really overlap. So neither of us is being squashed down by the other’s position, which I guess has contributed to some frictions in other situations in bands. It’s just being able to do things without having to talk about them so much and doing them is really such a relief.”
“For our situation, it’s worked as a positive thing,” Russell adds. “And yeah, we’ll keep being brothers for a while more.”
