After 57 years, Sparks are no longer pop's best kept secret. And that's "strange and amazing"  - Double J (2024)

How many groups can say they've achieved unprecedented levels of renewed popularity six decades into their career?

Curiously, cult pop icons Sparks are arguably bigger now than ever. Then again, it's very fitting for a band that always defied conventional logic.

Since 1966, sonic siblings Ron and Russel Mael have crafted one of the strangest, most diverse, and intimidating discographies .

Across 26 albums, they've juggled everything from glam and art rock, to disco, house, new wave, synthpop, neo-classical, opera and beyond. They've had hits, but outside of a dedicated fanbaseSparks have remained largely under the radar to the wider world.

However, their outsider status was diminished greatly by the release of 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers.

Littered with celebrity devotees and directed by Edgar Wright — the British filmmaker behind Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, Scott Pligrm vs The World but, more crucially, a Sparks super-fan – it was not only an exhaustive, entertaining film that chronicled Ron and Russell's 57 years in the music game but widely lauded as one of the best docos in recent memory.

"The whole point by Edgar was that it would expose Sparks to a wider audience, and I think it has way exceeded even his expectations," Russell Mael tells Double J's Karen Leng.

"Things have sort of been on a real upswing for Sparks in the last year or two, so the timing now is really right to come over and play in Australia."

Arriving in the country this week for their first Australian tour in 22 years (and only the second time ever), excited doesn't come close to describing how Sparks fans feel. And there's definitely more of them now.

"The thing we're most pleased about is that it's brought in a younger audience as well, and that's translated to who's attending the concerts.

"We've managed to retain the people that have been with us since the beginning but it's really inspiring to us to be reaching a lot of new people with the current music [and] not in a nostalgic sort of way."

"The people that are really fans of the band, whether they're new or old, really think they're part of this club."

The renewed interest feels "both strange and amazing to us," adds older brother Ron Mael, and coincides with Sparks' 26th album,The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte.

The LP was released in May and accompanied by a music video starring 'our' Cate Blanchett, in which the two-time Academy Award winning Australian shows off some confounding dance moves.

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The two parties met in Paris at the 2021 César Awards, where Blanchett collected a Lifetime Achievement prize and Sparks won Best Original Music for Annette, their Adam Driver-starring rock opera co-written and directed by Leos Carax -the enfant terrible of French cinema.

"[Cate] introduced herself and said she was a fan," Russell remembers. "We were so excited because we think she's amazing."

He confirms the offbeat choreography in the video is "100 per cent Cate Blanchett."

In fact, when it came time to collaborate, they "didn't even discuss what her role or participation would be. She came up with the dance thing and to do it the way she did it, too.

"When she first heard 'The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte' she said she wasn't sure whether she was supposed to cry or laugh at the intent or lyric... That ambiguity – there's a place for that in writing lyrics."

It's that inscrutable sensibility that's enabled Sparks to endure music's fickle trends, even as they've struggled to find widespread acceptance.

Their big British break

Coming up during the height of hippie-fied late '60s Los Angeles, Ron and Russell really "felt like the odd people out." After releasing two albums in their native US to a resounding thud, Sparks relocated to the UK where they had a breakout hit with 1974's 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us'.

More specifically, with their startling debut performance on Top Of The Pops, where the spectacle of Russell's helium vocal acrobatics and Ron's deadpan looks and Charlie Chaplin moustache were beamed into 15 million British homes.

Famously, John Lennon was watching and allegedly rang Ringo Starr to say: "You won't believe what's on television. Marc Bolan Is playing a song with Adolf Hitler."

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"People felt very strongly about it," Ron recalls of the historic broadcast, which fed newspaper headlines for days after.

"It was never planned that way, but I was going against the grain of what is considered attention-getting in a band. It was as much as a shock to me as anybody else."

Lumped in with Britain's burgeoning glam rock movement, Sparks found an audience for their theatrical streak and wild presentation; what they call a "certain kind of outrageousness" in line with "the way we felt about what a pop band should be."

However, few pop acts are armed with such a wicked sense of humour, lacing their album art with visual gags and tongue in cheek song and album titles: Kimono My House. Angst In My Pants. Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins, the list goes on.

On first impressions, Sparks songs often scan as absurd – catchy, comical, littered with laugh-out-loud lines. (A personal favourite? 'So tell me, Mrs. Lincoln, aside from that, how was the play?')

But this wit meant Sparks were often misunderstood or dismissed as a novelty act, overshadowing the biting satire and deeply subversive nature lyingjust beneath the surface.

Your favourite band's favourite band

Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea – one of many celebrities lining up to speak highly of Sparks' importance and influence in Wright's documentary – encapsulates the band's paradoxical nature when he remarks: "Something that's always confounded me is people's inability to take humour seriously."

"We agree with Flea," Russell tells Double J. "There can be humour within the lyrics [but] in the best of our songs, there's also a deeper side to what you're saying.

"We don't see things having to be all-funny or all-not-funny. There can be subtleties and tones within what you're doing lyrically and where you can't necessarily place where it's coming from."

That quality is deeply ingrained in Sparks' personality. It's part and parcel with what Franz Ferdinand frontman and Sparks collaborator Alex Kapranos calls being "creatively reckless."

Again, the brothers agree. "You should be that way, just to be creatively reckless all the time.

"You could risk stumbling too, but I think part of what pop music should be is having a recklessness and rebelliousness to it, in whatever way, whether it's lyrically or musically.

"I think that's what we've always liked, and other bands when we were growing up, that was the elements that we liked about them and so we also have that same sort of spirit."

Essentially, Ron and Russell want to make the kind of music they'd "like to be hearing out there in the world. But for our particular tastes we don't hear it as much as we like to."

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Sparks' admirers span the breadth of the music world. Everyone from Faith No More to Beck and 'Weird Al' Yankovic.

"That was so heartwarming for us to see in the documentary," Russell says.

"When Edgar told us 'oh, tomorrow I'm going to be interviewing so-and-so'. It turns out it's Steve Jones from the Sex Pistols talking about what was so special about Sparks for him. And a whole other generation, [super-producer] Jack Antonoff talking in the same kind of terms.

"That was really special to us and surprising to us, really satisfying to know that what you're doing is reaching other musicians but from different types of music."

The Mael brothers are also beloved by new wave idols like Duran Duran, Erasure and New Order, who took great inspiration from their 1979 album No. 1 In Heaven – a proto sythpop project that paired Sparks with disco and electronic music legend Giorgio Moroder.

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"It was kind of the first time Giorgio had worked with a band as opposed to a solo singer, like Donna Summer… [he] was really up to the challenge as well," Russell says. "It was basically the three of us in the studio, we learned a lot of the technology side from him on that style of music.

"None of us knew what that album was going to be when we first set foot in the studio — we all went at it really naively. But it turned out to be something special."

The album opened up a fresh electronic toolkit for Sparks that would expand their musical horizons for decades to come, and spawned minor Australian hit 'The Number One Song In Heaven' and UK Top 10 single 'Beat The Clock'.

"But critics were mystified," Russell notes. "We were supposedly a rock band… and now we're doing this thing with synthesizers? 'Only two people, how could that be a band?!'

"For us, that was puzzling because we didn't think that pop music, rock music, whatever you wanna call it, had to be so strict in its definition."

Living in the Sparks renaissance

The Mael siblings are both in their late seventies but their enthusiasm and energy is just as potent as it ever was.

"We're just passionate about what we do and we enjoy doing it," says Russell. "Especially now in this point of our career where it's such an unlikely situation for a band to be now on their 26th album and to be having this upward trend in a new, diverse audience following us."

With the exception of working out of their own purpose-built L.A. studio since 1994, Sparks say their methodology has altered little over the years. And while they appreciate the increased notoriety, it hasn't changed how they approach things.

"The only thing that it really does [change] is we're just excited that we're aware that there'll probably be more people listening to our latest album. And so in a certain way, it gives us an extra motivation and extra challenge to make it really special.

"I mean we always go at each album with that attitude and try to make it as though it's an album that might be the debut album for any new listener to Sparks and, whatever it is, would encapsulate the essence of what the band is and be as forward-thinking as anything we've done forever."

That ethos isn't shared by many groups who've been around as long as Sparks have.

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Any act that's survived the dramatic changes of the music industry over 50 years – and there isn't a glut of them – earn a heritage status that seems to give them permission to coast on past glories rather actively reinventing.

Respectability, in other words. "No one ever accused us of being respectable," chuckles Ron.

"But I know what you mean. There's a certain kind of reflection that's expected. You're permitted to analyse things in a more serious way."

"We consider what we're doing really serious but it doesn't necessarily mean that it has to eliminate the excitement and fun that's a part of what bands aren't at that longevity stage are."

"We're fortunate because we can do this without having to really even think about it. It's just what we do. We're not thinking 'Oh, we gotta move in that direction and not be that kind of band'. We just work in a very non-intellectual way in a certain sense."

Experiencing their shares of highs and lows over a long-winding career has given Sparks perspective on the career high point they're currently experiencing. And enjoying.

"We don't take it for granted and we have an obligation — in particular to the people who've come along more recently – to go all out on shows and on albums," Ron says.

Having worked for so long in the margins, expanding (and sometimes fraying) the edges of what can be considered pop music, the world is certainly a far more interesting place for having Sparks in it.

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Catch Sparks at the following Australian tour dates:

Thursday 26 October – Palais Theatre: Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung Land,Melbourne

Sunday 29 October – Harvest Rock Festival: Kaurna Land, Adelaide

Tuesday 31 October – Sydney Opera House: Gadigal Land,Sydney

Thursday 2 November – Fortitude Music Hall: Turrbal Jagera Land, Brisbane

After 57 years, Sparks are no longer pop's best kept secret. And that's "strange and amazing"  - Double J (2024)
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