It’s Sparks’ world. Fangirl Cate just lives in it

Irony is a gamble at the start of any conversation but this is Sparks, so I begin the Zoom call by apologising for Cate Blanchett on behalf of all Australians. Forgive her, I tell Ron and Russell Mael, she’ll do anything to get close to people who are more famous and influential than she is.

“The nerve of that woman,” Ron responds.

“We’re just trying to help out a budding actress who’s trying to get a leg up in the industry,” adds his younger brother Russell‚ the one without the moustache.

But seriously – if that word can apply to a song called The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte – Blanchett’s starring role in the LA pop duo’s new video is a coup. “The best living actress” (says Russell) dancing deadpan in a yellow suit, an act she repeated on stage with the band in Glastonbury in June, is a neat illustration of how high the Mael brothers’ stock has risen, 52 years after their first album.

The unlikely collaborators connected at the Cesar Awards in Paris in 2021, where Blanchett picked up a Lifetime Achievement gong and Sparks won Best Original Music for Annette, their debut feature co-written and directed by Leos Carax. Russell accepted in fulsome, breathless French. Ron remained in character, mostly mute.

Afterwards Blanchett crashed their dressing room to tell them she’d been a fan forever, which is a long time. Sparks arrived in 1974 with Kimono My House and its pop-operatic single, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us. Their Australian breakthrough came with 1980s synth-pop hit When I’m with You.

“On a whim” the Maels sent her the title song of their 25th album. “We had no ideas for what to do with that subject matter,” says Russell, “so she came up with that dance and that persona. We said, ‘We’ll stand behind you and you do that’, and we did it all in one take. We were just so happy to have her be a part of this whole new phase of Sparks.”

Ron and Russell Mael, aka Sparks.Credit: Munachi Osegbu

This “whole new phase” kicked off two years ago with the double whammy of Annette and English action-comedy director Edgar Wright’s documentary, The Sparks Brothers. It continues with bigger shows full of new fans, says Ron, “doing cosplay as Cate, wearing probably slightly-less-expensive yellow outfits”.

“The nature of Edgar’s film seemed to resonate with a lot of people,” says Russell. “We’ve had this younger and more diverse audience that’s now coming out to see Sparks shows, which is really encouraging for us at this point in our career.”

Russell and Ron Mael in a still from The Sparks Brothers.Credit: Focus Features

Apart from its aptly comical tone, the distinction of Wright’s rock doc is that it portrays an act that never peaked or faded. The melodramatic vocals of Russell and the ironically observed songs of scowling keyboard player Ron comprise a product of rare consistency in the smash-and-grab annals of pop.

It would be an unusual show that didn’t include the hits above, or Angst In My Pants, or The Number One Song in Heaven, or When Do I Get To Sing “My Way”. But to fresh ears, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte is as good a starting point as any. Past decades have brought radical departures – check out the choral/orchestral genius of 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven – but album 25 is another thrill of catchy tunes and shopping mall social observations.

“We try not to be writing songs to be played live,” says Ron, but the expanded six-piece Sparks has toured so much that “I think maybe that [sound] was in the back of our minds”.

“We’re fortunate that what we’re doing now we can do in a sincere way. We don’t feel like we’re writing down to reach people … These are songs that we think have extended both our definition of what pop music is from previous albums, but just in a general sense, what pop music can be.”

One Sparks hallmark is the heightening of banal subject matter with often incongruously sophisticated music. Besides the enigmatically distressed cafe patron of the title, the new album includes a thumbs-down from a day-old infant, Nothing Is as Good as They Say It Is, an unrequited love story on the fleeting tracks of an Escalator, and an accountant-and-teacher couple pretending to be fugitives in a dramatic fast-car getaway.

“We’re observant,” says Russell. “We take notice of people and what they do, even very mundane things. And when you do that in the context of a song you make those mundane things become bigger than maybe they warrant being.”

Russell and Ron Mael on the cover of their album Angst In My Pants. Credit: Getty Images

He doesn’t mean to name-drop (again) but they did meet legendary French filmmaker Jacques Tati in the 1970s.

“There was a project we were going to do together and he actually came to the meeting on the bus. He liked to take public transportation to observe people. The waitress came up to take our order when were with him and he was kind of mimicking, not in a nasty way or anything, but just [noticing] her manner … That observation of human [behaviour], there’s something to it.”

The pair’s confessed “snobby” Francophile streak obviously hit the jackpot with Annette after decades of projects falling over. To have their debut screenplay open the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, and Carax receive the Best Director award, was “a dream come true,” says Ron.

They’re naturally working on a follow-up, reportedly titled X-Crucior, which is “completely different story-wise than Annette, but it’s again our sensibility with the music and the story is a little bit … unconventional, maybe, for a movie musical,” Russell says.

Meanwhile, the biggest tour of their lives rolls to its Australian conclusion next month, including their Sydney Opera House debut and the Palais Theatre in Melbourne, where they last played a half-full Corner Hotel 22 years ago.

“When we stand back from all this, it’s really strange,” says Ron. “In Los Angeles we just played the Hollywood Bowl, and for us at this stage of our career to be playing the biggest show we’ve ever played in such an iconic place, you’re kind of thinking, ‘What am I doing here?’

“It’s bizarre, but just incredibly inspiring. You hate to use the word vindication, but we do feel a certain measure of that; that maybe for a certain area and segment [of people], for some of that time, we were right.”

The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte is out now. Sparks play Melbourne’s Palais Theatre, October 26; Sydney Opera House, October 31; and Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall, November 2.

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