Album Review: Sparks - "A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip"

 

There's no doubt that Sparks have definitely enjoyed something of a career renaissance in recent years. Their previous album, 2017's excellent Hippopotamus saw them enjoying their first UK Top 10 album for well over 30 years and it was deserved as it was one of their strongest efforts in recent memory.

The Mael brothers have always been experts at constructing slightly warped and wonderful pop music and the Beatles-y opener All That is a good example - the sort of song that would have easily been a chart hit if the singles chart still meant anything these days. Likewise the demented glam stomp of I'm Toast which starts off with a great typical Sparks lyric "Started at the top/Then I had a drop/Then a further drop..." And let's face it, any band which can rhyme Lawnmower with Andover definitely deserve your attention. But then I guess song titles like Stravinsky's Only Hit (as gloriously demented as its title suggests you'll be pleased to know) and Sainthood Is Not In Your Future probably gave that game away a bit to begin with. Elsewhere, Iphone includes the immortal couplet "Friends of Mrs Jobs often heard her sobs..."

As you'd expect, it's an enjoyably varied album as well with the almost samba style rhythms of Left Out In The Cold contrasting nicely with the pure pop of Self-Effacting and the warped almost music hall style Onomato Pia while the nervy panic attack set to music of Existential Threat is another highlight on here.

By the time the lush orchestration (including a kids' choir) of the plaintive Please Don't Fuck Up My World brings things to a close, you're in no doubt that Sparks have definitely kept their recent vein of form ticking over quite nicely here. A Steady Drip Drip Drip should have plenty to keep their existing fans happy while those who are unlucky enough to not have explored their vast back catalogue yet should find plenty here to draw them in as well. Good stuff.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #29: The Quireboys - "Homewreckers And Heartbreakers" (2008)

Image
  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Album Review: Ming City Rockers - "Lime"

Image
  Hailing from Immingham near Grimsby (hence their name), the Ming City Rockers briefly looked like quite hot property a few years ago with their debut self-titled album being a prime slice of howled smalltown angst which picked them up enough plaudits to get Steve Albini in to produce the follow-up, 2016's  Lemon . And then...nothing. Seven years on from that sophomore effort and the group have returned, slimmed down to a three-piece and with a very noticeable change to their image. But the sound is very much the same with the sort of angry three-chord garage punk that made their debut such a good effort. The change seems to be that Lime  sees the Ming City Rockers taking their worldview out of the smalltowns and over to the nation as a whole. The sarky lead off single Jill Was An Anarchist  was a definite marker laid down and there's plenty more on Lime  where that came from such as the snarling Poor Old Jim  taking a swipe at alcoholic F*r*ge-supporting boomers ( "He us
Read more