SPARKS
FRIDAY MAY 30TH, 2008
ISLINGTON ACADEMY, LONDON, UK
WORDS: CAMERON COOK
PHOTOS: TOM OLDHAM

It’s fitting that the person who indirectly turned us onto LA brother-duo Sparks was none other than our ultimate teenage idol, Mr. Steven Patrick Morrissey. In a quote used fairly often when referencing Sparks in the press, Morrissey recalls wanting to “go and live with” Sparks, as he’d “finally found creatures of his own species”. And as our 16-year-old selves were undoubtedly of the same species as Mozzer, we could only assess that brothers to comprise Sparks (59-year-old vocalist Russel Mael and 60-year old keyboardist Ron) were of our own ilk. Thus began a mad scramble to propel ourselves into their deranged world of chamber pop, glam rock and fantastic allure, where men could have unironic poodle hair and toothbrush moustaches, where busted geishas could adorn album art, and lyrics that seemed nonsensical at first actually bore searing wit and a sort of lovable malice, naturally born from being completely, unabashedly weird.

Our early forays into the Sparks oeuvre (their 21st album Exotic Creatures of the Deep is released this month) included mass listenings of their third, and probably most well-known record, Kimono My House: the opening track, the legendary “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both Of Us” (which has been covered many times, most notably by Siouxie Sioux and erm, that guy from the Darkness) set our brains into motion. If people could make music this immediately likeable yet experimentally challenging, and there are 20-some-odd albums worth of it, we better get cracking with the thrift shop hunting and Internet searches. Funnily enough, one of our favorite Sparks albums to date is Hello Young Lovers, their 20th, released in 2006 and featuring two of their most ambitious recordings: “Dick Around”, in which Russell’s vocals are layered ad nauseum until his classic falsetto unnerves everything else on the track and “(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country”, which references sexual conquering in the same light as (him again) the Smiths’ “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours”. Brilliant.

Imagine, if you will, our uproarious joy when we learnt that Sparks would be performing, all throughout the beginning of summer, all 21 of their albums in their entirety. Then imagine our crushing sorrow when we realized it was all going down at the Islington Academy in London and we weren’t going to go. Fuck. But as you’ll know by now, ’Sup is not a magazine to be defeated, and we sent our genius photo correspondent Tom Oldham to capture visual evidence of their Angst in My Pants performance (their 1982 LP that featured Ron in a wedding dress on the cover). If you attended the show shoot us your commentary and we’ll be glad to post it. And Sparks, if you’re Googling yourselves, why not show NYC a little love next time, huh?