Sophisticated pop that has survived all zeitgeists of the last 50 years.
Anyone who has seen Edgar Wright’s film “The Sparks Brothers” knows them all: the 25 albums by the Mael brothers, who are as silly as they are flamboyant, and their backgrounds. With THE GIRL IS CRYING IN HER LATTE, album no. 26 and therefore not the subject of the film, the two over 70-year-olds do not present us with a late work with coffee house versions of their hits, but rather a ludicrous and conceptless song collection that consists of all Sparks phases of the last 50 years. First there is the eponymous single “The Girl is Crying In Her Latte”, in the clip Cate Blanchett dances in a canary-yellow Stella McCartney suit. A driving, simple four-to-the-floor song woven into the sounds of a dying Atari.
The following “Veronica Lake” is completely different: a complex affair, equipped with impressive minimal electronics, which give the 74-year-old Russell Mael plenty of room for his vaudeville vocal acrobatics. And for those who now think Sparks focused on leftfield electronics, they tap into the glam rock of their early days on song #3, “Nothing Is As Good As They Say.” And so it goes on, sometimes chamber music, sometimes bombast, mostly with the sung joke that is already in the title. Anyway, Russell Mael could start his falsetto to a running lawnmower, it would still be Sparks. May this band exist for another 50 years.
Author: Michael Prenner