Full of their signature personality and style, Sparks recently spotlighted a new album — titled MAD! (their 26th studio album) — in a buoyant show at the Lincoln Theatre.
It’s a catchy effort full of the Sparks brand of wry humor and their knack for wordplay. It’s also full of worthy songs, continuing a decade long hot streak for the world’s first, and arguably greatest, synthpop duo.
As you may recall, Ron (keyboards) and Russell (vocals) Mael, the brothers who formed that synthpop duo, have received renewed acclaim in the wake of a very good and exhaustive 2021 documentary by Edgar Wright — The Sparks Brothers. At that point, the Mael brothers already were on a creative upswing, having returned to the studio for the release of Hippopotamus in 2017, which returned Sparks to the UK Top 10 charts and launched a series of critically successful albums.
Outside of their lastest record, however, Sparks didn’t dwell too much on their recent efforts, other than some excellent tracks from A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (more on that later), instead opting to take a satisfying dive through some impressive career highlights at the Lincoln Theatre on Sept. 9. Ron and Russell sprinkled MAD! throughout their set, starting with an able introduction to the material through the catchy and memorial “Do Things My Own Way.”
Watch the official music video for “Do Things My Own Way” by Sparks on YouTube:
For me, it was a great treat to hear three tracks from the sensational Sparks album No. 1 in Heaven (1979), their eighth studio record and their famed collaboration with producer Giorgio Moroder. In the first half of the show, Sparks presented the rarely performed tracks “Academy Award Performance” and “Beat the Clock,” both irresistible tunes exploding with satirical commentary and biting cuts. I’ve always had a personal love of “Beat the Clock,” a sendup of the ambitious of modern live and a song that holds up pretty darn well in our make-or-break culture roughly 45 years later.
In the final leg of the show as they leapt toward the end, Sparks also performed “The Number One Song in Heaven,” the glittering disco gem that made them trendsetters for new wave breakout stars for the dawn of the 1980s. Perhaps Sparks already won the title of Your Band’s Favorite Band previously but “The Number One Song in Heaven” firmly placed them there forever afterward.
Much of the rest of the set read like a list of welcome milestones from the Sparks Catalog. At the midpoint, Sparks performed “All You Think About Is Sex” from the great In Outer Space (1983), which inspired a chorus of girls to dance along the edge from the front row of the Lincoln Theatre. The witty new wave ditty was a great reminder of how Sparks made music that you can dance to — and well wouldn’t you know it, a few songs later, Sparks played the clever and worthy “Music That You Can Dance To” from the album of the same name (1986).
At ages 80 and 76 respectively, Ron and Russell still both brought verve to their performance. Ron even rose from his piano to perform his famous vaudeville-style dance for a brief interlude, although he motioned apologetically to the audience due to how brief it was. Ron also offered up a song in his renowned Sprechgesang — this time specifically “Suburban Homeboy” from the seminal Sparks album Lil’ Beethoven (2002).
Watch the official “Ron Speaks” visualizer for “Suburban Homeboy” by Sparks on YouTube:
As wonderful as it is to experience the humor of Sparks, the duo also unearth moments of true pathos. My concert buddy was particularly moved by “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World,” a plainly worded ode to the earth and the people on it from the album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip (2020). The album’s rueful “All That” ended Sparks’ two-song encore on a serious note as well.
I was overjoyed to hear “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way'” (from fan-fave album Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins [1994]), a number that may contain some hallmark Sparks clever wordplay but also achieves some true pathos. It also was great to hear “The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte” (2023) in the encore; it’s a song that fully leverages Sparks mechanisms of repetition and beat while injecting a note of melancholy. Of course, Ron and Russell blurred the lines between deadpan and deadly before the show was over with their breakout number “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us,” the third studio album Kimono My House (1974) track that put them on the map in England and eventually the world. The performance of the song transported a happily grooving room to the next level.
Sparks were in amazing form for their Lincoln Theatre show, their third visit there in four years. This was perhaps my favorite setlist of their three recent visits, and it in my mind begs for a fourth visit. But will Sparks be able to mount such a large tour again at their age? I hope so but see them while you can all the same.
Here are some photos of Sparks performing live at the Lincoln Theatre on Sept. 9, 2025. All pictures by Mickey McCarter.
