All is well in the Sparks universe even if it’s not going so well in our own. The Mael brothers have enjoyed another vintage year with a number two album, MAD!, the highest charting in their history (yes, including Kimono My House). And this week sees the release of the sibling duo’s first ever EP, MADDER!, giving the world another four tracks that find them pushing the envelope of what pop can be, while also maintaining their remarkable, unerring consistency.
“It’s been a busy year, anyway,” says Ron Mael, speaking from his home in California. “We’ve been really pleased with the reaction to the new album and even to the EP, and we don’t take any of that for granted. We’ve been touring probably more than we’ve ever toured, starting in Japan, and then the UK, Europe and Scandinavia, and then we had a second leg across the US. There are always shows on a tour where you say: ‘It’ll be better tomorrow night’, but we were really fortunate this time because every show was greeted so warmly, even in some kind of obscure places.”
The thinking behind doing an EP came from the fact there was too much material for one album: “We were going through a real creative burst at the time, and we felt that to force so many songs onto somebody’s attention span might detract from everything. There are double albums that come out that diminish the effect of what it could be if it were more concise.” As lead single ‘Porcupine’ hit the airwaves, so did ‘The Happy Dictator’ by Gorillaz featuring Sparks, which is arguably the most overtly political song they have ever been involved in.
“Ain’t our fault,” retorts Ron, holding up his hands in comical surrender. “But we were so pleased when Damon [Albarn] asked about doing a collaboration on the new Gorillaz album [The Mountain, due next year], and then for it to be the first single was just a really exhilarating thing. We were going on tour and we didn’t know how we were going to do it. He sent over a couple of songs, but we went with this one in particular where his vocals were already fairly locked in, and so we tried to complement what was there with Russell’s vocal lines. It worked both in a lyrical, thematic way, but, more importantly, in a musical way.”
What comes next for Sparks is uncertain at this point, but ideally it’ll be X-Crucior, the long-awaited cinematic musical, recently attached to John Woo. Is he still in? “He is,” says Mael, tentatively. “Things change all the time, but at the moment that’s the case.”
If the financing isn’t completely sorted yet then things appear to be moving in the right direction. “Nothing is logical in our progression,” says Mael, “but it would seem like it’s the most logical next step. Obviously we can do another Sparks album, it’s just that the format is so kind of predictable for us, even if the songs aren’t predictable. Doing promotions, starting a tour… we would prefer to have something that’s a little more unpredictable in both a musical way and also just in how it’s presented. And we had such an incredible experience with the Annette film several years ago, the musical that Leos Carax directed that we had written, and we would really, really like to have that experience again.” Thankfully, anything can happen in the Sparks universe, and usually does.
Ron Mael is one of America’s greatest living songwriters, and arguably its most consistent over the past 55 years or so. Unsurprisingly, his Baker’s Dozen choices are an eclectic mix of rock and roll, opera, hip hop, pop, classical and jazz.
To begin reading Ron Mael’s Baker’s Dozen, click ‘First Selection’ below
