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LBRCDRON

Introducing Sparks was titled thus because, after three years of wild success in the UK, this was the right time to sell the band, prophets without honour in their own land, back to the US. Originally released in 1977, it is the seventh album by Sparks and the only one of their 20 long-players not available on CD. Until now – the duo’s own label, Lil’ Beethoven Records, are putting it out in November. Finally, you can hear the much-discussed but rarely heard transitional album from Ron and Russell Mael’s near-40-year career.

David Bowie wasn’t the only chameleonic figure in ‘70s rock. And so Introducing Sparks finds the Mael brothers, together with an array of top session musicians (mirroring Donald Fagen and Walter Becker of Steely Dan in this respect), caught between the innovative glam-prog-pop of their four early-to-mid-‘70s Island albums (Kimono My House, Propaganda, Indiscreet, Big Beat) and the audacious proto-electro of their 1979 collaboration with Giorgio Moroder (No 1 In Heaven).

Introducing Sparks was their first and only album for Columbia, who pushed the boat out at the time by releasing it on red vinyl. They also spared no expense when it came to the recording, allowing or perhaps encouraging Ron and Russell to engage the cream of LA’s backing singers and session guns for hire. Just as the front and back cover of the album presents our heroes as faux matinee idols, all soft focus and airbrushed perfection, so Introducing Sparks has a polished, slick, sophisticated big-budget sound that reflects the record company’s desire to get the Mael’s music on the radio.

Heard today, Introducing Sparks sounds less like made-for-heavy-rotation AOR and more like a comment on, or rather series of pastiches of (alright, then: acerbic attacks on) daytime US radio-fodder: imagine Randy Newman as programme controller in charge of America’s airwaves for some idea of this satirical yet highly commercial meta-rock.

A Big Surprise allies Russell’s quasi-operatic falsetto to classic Beach Boys harmonies while Over The Summer could be an outtake from the sessions that produced California Girls. Girls On The Brain furthers the idea of this album as a warped, late-‘70s take on early-‘60s summer fun and romance while Ladies namechecks everyone from Joan Of Arc to Eva Braun and the guitar solo on Goofing Off outdoes all-comers in the masturbatory ‘70s axeman stakes. Occupation and Forever Young have infectious melodies as well as a contaminating worldview that soon spreads throughout the rest of Introducing Sparks. Finally, Those Mysteries is a ballad that seduces as it scythes its way through the maze of modern social and sexual mores. How brilliant. How Sparks.

Introducing Sparks will be available with two catalogue numbers:
LBRCDRON – Ron Mael on front cover
LBRCDRUS – Russell Mael on front cover