Sparks: the best band you’ve never heard of
Brothers Mael, American music’s enduring outsiders, are being lauded by a new generation of pop fans after 25 albums, staccato highs and mystifying struggles with acceptance.
For decades Sparks, the musical duo of brothers Ron and Russell Mael, felt like they were “beating our heads against a brick wall.”
The brothers came of age as Anglophile outsiders in the artifice-bucking hippie scene of late 60s Los Angeles where their songs – sardonic, and dense with wordplay and anything-goes theatricality – were met with scepticism from the earnest rockers of their era. Eventually, they found a hit in Britain with their 1974 Tony Visconti-produced single This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us which inevitably led to an invitation to Top of the Pops.
Even at the height of glam rock’s gaga power, Sparks made a startling impression. That performance, which was beamed into 15 million British homes, saw a bare-chested Russell romp around the stage, singing about cannibals needing protein in an ear-splitting caterwaul.
Meanwhile, Ron, sporting his distinctive Charlie Chaplin moustache and a taxman’s suit, brooded in the background. The spectacle so unnerved John Lennon that he purportedly rang up Ringo Starr, exclaiming, “You won’t believe what’s on television. Marc Bolan is playing a song with Adolf Hitler.”
Where most bands would ride that momentum and double down on their winning formula, Sparks subverted. They set out to craft their intimidatingly enormous discography; a mutant of metal, new wave, disco, house, classical, glam rock, and opera – peerless in its creativity, diversity and weirdness. While there were several hit singles, they were rarely consecutive or in the same country. In Australia, their 1980 Giorgio Moroder-produced song When I’m With You was a minor hit but Sparks, for the most part, remained underground, cherished by a dedicated, “if you know, you know” fanbase.
But thanks to Shaun of the Dead director Edgar Wright’s effusive documentary The Sparks Brothers, the Mael’s César Award win for scoring and writing Leos Carax’s musical Annette, and a Cate Blanchett-cosign, it seems as though Sparks are finally getting their kudos. High off anomalous mainstream attention, the brothers will return to Australia in October for their first shows in 22 years.
When Review connects with Ron and Russell over Zoom, they are in their homes in Los Angeles. Ron, the eldest brother at 78, and Sparks’ principal songwriter, still casts an eccentric figure, he wears perfectly circular sunglasses, and his moustache has evolved into a slender, John Waters brushstroke. In the background is a shrine of perfectly preserved vintage Nike Air Jordans.
“It’s so counterintuitive to be having this level of acceptance at this stage of our career,” he tells Review. “To have everything we’re doing accepted now by the general public is strange, but it’s really inspiring to see a younger audience coming to concerts, and knowing the songs.”
Russell, at 74, boasts an enviable mop of hair and chimes in, adding that the band are “finding we have younger and more diverse fans than we have ever had in the past.”
Sparks have only ever toured Australia once, in 2000, when they played in Sydney and Melbourne in support of their album, Balls. “We’re coming back to Australia under different circumstances. We’re able to play the Sydney Opera House, which to us, is a really iconic venue,” says Russell.
Since their last visit, the brothers have released eight more albums – curating a setlist, they say, is a matter of killing your darlings. Something they both agree is liberating. “In the past, we played songs everybody wants to hear, but now we can do songs that are perhaps more obscure, from albums that didn’t get attention at the time, and they will be received in a different way,” says Russell.
But they admit that it is songs from their new album, That Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, that they are itching to play. It’s their 25th album, yet listeners would hardly guess it; Sparks sound more innovative and urgent than bands one-tenth their age.
“Unlike other bands that have had long careers, we think that what we’re doing now is as vital, vibrant and forward-thinking as anything we’ve done in the past,” says Russell. It is also the first released through Island – nurturer of Sparks’ 70s hits – in 47 years.
“We don’t want to rely on the past,” says Russell. “I think people are expecting that we will come up with something that’s hopefully surprising or fresh. People are willing to accept us going wherever it is musically, and that’s a really healthy situation to be in.”
That Girl Is Crying In Her Latte, was announced with a music video for its title track starring Cate Blanchett, whom the Sparks brothers met at the César Awards in 2021, where they were accepting the best original score award for their work on Annette. “She knocked on our dressing room door, and we were like ‘that’s Cate Blanchett … what is she doing here? What is she doing in Sparks dressing room?’,” recalls Russell.
“She explained to us that she was a fan of Sparks and was really excited to meet us. We really respect her as an actress, she has done so much in such varied roles. So we just kept in touch.” The brothers had planned to just have Blanchett stand still, but it was her idea to dance. “And then she reprised her role in front of thousands of people at Glastonbury. It was really such an honour to have her there. We love her a lot.”
Annette was another project born out of a chance meeting at a film festival. This time, Cannes in 2013, where the brothers met Leos Carax, who used their song How Are You Getting Home in his Palm d’Or winner Holy Motors. “We really got along and he explained that he had been a Sparks fan since he was young and growing up in Paris.”
Out of curiosity, they sent him their latest project – a concept album about a comedian and an opera singer who give birth to a daughter with a unique gift. “We weren’t fishing for anything, we just wanted him to hear it. He came back to us and said that he wanted to direct it as his next feature.”
Annette, which was released in 2021 and stars Marion Cotillard and Adam Driver in its lead roles, was the Mael’s first produced screenplay, after a series of misfires including a musical with the French auteur Jacques Tati in the 1970s, and a Tim Burton-directed adaptation of the manga Mai and the Psychic Girl, which was almost made in the 1980s, before Burton lost interest and dropped out. The film opened Cannes, and notched Carax the Best Director Trophy.
“It was so surreal that after trying so long to have something work in film, to finally have it happen in this really big way,” says Russell.
That same year saw the release of the Edgar Wright documentary, The Sparks Brothers, a 140-minute labour of love in which the likes of Sex Pistol Steve Jones, Weird Al Yankovic, Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Flea, and author Neil Gaiman, all professed their love for the band. In the film, the pop megaproducer Jack Antonoff, who is best known for his work with Taylor Swift, declares that “all pop music is just Sparks rearranged”.
When asked how the documentary made them feel, Ron admits that it all came as a surprise. “We work in a closed-off way, and were never aware of the extent of how many musicians knew about what we were doing,” he says. “It was so gracious of all those people to put into words what we meant to them.”
Ron says that their career has been filled with peaks and valleys, that have felt as though they have been “beating our heads against a brick wall.”
“Not creatively, we always have confidence in what we’re doing creatively, but in the hopes that more people can hear what we’re doing,” he says. “Sometimes the circumstances have been right, where what we’re doing musically connects – and other times, we will make something that we think is just as vital, and for whatever reason it doesn’t work.
“It’s fatiguing going through those twists and turns.”
“We get exhausted but I think we like it,” he adds. “What gets us through are situations that we’ve found ourselves in, like now, where the stuff that we’re doing is being seen by a lot more people.”
Sparks will play Melbourne’s Palais Theatre on Thursday, October 26; Sydney’s Opera House on Tuesday, October 21; and Brisbane’s Fortitude Music Hall on Thursday, November 2.
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