It's one music's great injustices that so many artists are accorded such unbecoming reverence and relevance just for having the indecency to keep going; just look at U2 and the Stones getting Grammys and Paul Weller anticipating a Brit for so-called returns to form that smacked of cataclysmic complacency. Sparks, however, despite having a career longer than the majority of PlayLouderers' lives, have yet to reap such benefits. They're seldom dribbled over critically, they've got a demure handful of hits to their name, and they're not exactly awash with awards. All of which really, REALLY needs to change after this dazzlingly difficult 20th album...
The Mael mob's stall here is pretty well set out during 'Rock, Rock, Rock': "Soft passages, they get you into trouble," sings Russell, "They imply a certain faux respectability / A certain measure of weakness... / A certain level of maturity". In other words, the soporific gush that many of their contemporaries are seeping has no place on 'Hello Young Lovers'. Instead, it's a grandiose adventure and a briskly comic farrago, and were they to have crammed any more drama onto this album it would have snapped. For heaven's sake, its centrepiece is a reworking of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' as a galloping rollick somewhere along the lines of an unbridled Alabama 3 but with a satirical slant worthy of Parker and Stone that rejoices in the unbeatably-titled '(Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country?' Even if that were all they'd managed to come up with, this would still be cause for partying to a bacchanalian degree.
But there's more! And, my, just how much more. Opening track 'Dick Around' is a seven-minute several-part symphony that houses the most blindingly baroque harmonies eased onto disc for many a year and makes the prospect of a The Darkness-Muse absurd-off seem like an El Presidente B-side by comparison. 'As I Sit Down To Play The Organ At The Notre Dame Cathedral' practically recreates that Simpsons episode where Bart replaces the church organist's music with some Iron Butterfly only does so genuinely beatifically. 'Here Kitty' is essentially an instalment in the classic 70s poor porn Confessions Of... series, in this case being the frot-fest of a fireman. 'Waterproof' actually contains the lyric, "I see you crying but I'm not buying your Meryl Streep mimicry / It's misdirected, your voice inflected for maximum sympathy", and who the devil else writes like that these days? Or, indeed, ever did? And that's only about half the album. We could go on.
Yes, it's a shamelessly arch and overarching achievement, and, make no mistake, some of you out there will hate this record and want to have at it with badly corroded screwdrivers. Those of you, though, that clasp it to your bosom will find it leaves cuddly spongy imprints and marginal claw marks and, really, you won't ever want to let it go. They may not quite be part of the Class of 2006, but, with this in their arsenal, Sparks really are among the brightest hopes on offer today.
Iain Moffat
