Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, recently released a new album, MAD!, via Transgressive Records. The prolific and massively influential musical duo soon embark on an accompany tour, and they perform at the Lincoln Theatre in DC on Tuesday, Sept. 9.
Earlier this year, the Brothers Mael dropped a series of singles from the album, including “Drowned in a Sea of Tears.” On the heels of the “sweeping, theatrical breakup tune” (Stereogum) “JanSport Backpack,” “Drowned in a Sea Of Tears” is a minor key mini-tragedy about the perils of emotional continence, of the stiff upper lip, of keeping it all in. The protagonist keeps her emotional landscape guarded behind high walls, and the narrator is unable to be her saviour. Unusually, for a Sparks song, there is no punchline, no twist in the tale. The accompanying video is a visual theater piece about a woman succumbing to her tears of grief.
Watch the official music video for “Drowned in a Sea of Tears” by Sparks on YouTube:
Despite the efforts of Edgar Wright’s superb 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, which introduced the duo to a wider audience than ever before, the exact creative dynamic between Ron and Russell Mael remains inscrutable, as mysterious and unknowable as their private lives.
The one thing we know for certain is that Ron Mael is one of our most acutely perceptive observers of social mores. In a different discipline — dramaturg, cartoonist, novelist, cineaste, chronicler — he’d be a Moliere, a Hogarth, a Fitzgerald, an Altman, a Swift. He just happens to work within the medium of popular song. His brother Russell Mael has the asset of a talent to put those observations across in a uniquely arresting manner, captivating as a frontman and gifted with a countertenor voice of extraordinary range. The alchemy between Ron on keys and Russell on vocals is simply what they do. And they’ve rarely done it better than on MAD!.
MAD! finds Ron and Russell examining cultural phenomena such as branded backpacks, tattoos, performative devotion (whether to a God, a lover, a celebrity or a sports team), the hegemony of banter, and the rise of influencers. The satire is never on-the-nose, always retaining enough ambiguity for the listener to fill in the blanks. And the exquisitely unusual lexicon (you won’t hear the word “epistemology” on many other albums this year) and cultural references leap out on every listen.
Musically there are nods to New Wave, Synthpop, Art Rock and Electronic Opera — all genres Sparks had hands in pioneering, or straight-up invented. When you hear echoes of other artists, from Air to Shostakovich, you remind yourself that they’re all people who Sparks influenced in the first place. (Well, maybe not Shostakovich.) Ultimately, however, MAD! is a modern record, which belongs in, and speaks to, the modern world. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider the vintage of its creators.
Sparks
Lincoln Theatre
Tuesday, Sept. 9
Doors @ 6:30pm
$68-$226
All ages
