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The original smart-arse pop brainiacs are back. Not that brothers Mael - Ron: keyboards, ‘tache, piercing stare, Russell: vocals, unsettlingly youthful looks, permanently befuddled mug - ever really went anywhere. But with recent high-profile endorsements, such as a prominent slot at the Morrissey-curated Meltdown festival and having their mid-70's classic ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us’ subjected to the paint-stripping falsetto blitzkrieg of Justin Hawkins on the dominant Darkness bozo’s solo single, their stock is at its highest since their heyday some 30 years ago.Were there any fears of the Los Angeles duo toning down some of their famously singular quirks to milk their newfound exposure to maximum, the opener ‘Dick Around’ immediately trample them underneath florid layers of berserk operatic bombast and rapid-fire falsetto recitals that make Queen at their most extravagant sound like the sparest of ancient one-string banjo-backed blues. Impressive in a loony scientist let loose in a laboratory way as it is, it’s pretty much guaranteed to send casual dabblers packing.
The synth-orchestra saturated showcase sets a template for much of what follows. As busily arranged, airless opuses whiz by in a bluster of tempo changes, multi-tracked vocal mania, complex classical motifs beefed up with outbreaks of hard-rocking riffage, theatrical flourishes and mighty dollops of trademark deadpan wackiness, the impression is that were Hello Young Lovers any wittier, it’d probably ditch this pop lark in favour of a more high-brow hobby.
Not all of it is relentlessly over the top, though. ‘Perfume’ is a sparse slice of Kraftwerk-esque electro-pop brilliance as natural and skimpy on extra ingredients as the fragrance-dodging lady Russell Mael’s serenading, whilst ‘(Baby Baby) Can I Invade Your Country' offers a verified sighting of that rarest of life-forms, a novelty tune that doesn’t make you want to eat your own ears. It’s outstanding stuff, but the overall mood on Sparks’ twentieth platter is better essayed by ‘As I Sit To Play The Organ At The Notre Dame Cathedral’, which batters you with Bachian baroque pomp to the point where mouthing extra-terrestrial waltz ‘There’s No Such Thing As Alien’s refrain “no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no” is the most appropriate reaction.
Still, you’ve to admire them. Rather than rest on their laurels after an aeon in the biz or reverse to the early 1980's in accordance to what's hip and happening, the Maels trek all the way back the seventeenth century for inspiration and return with something genuinely incomparable. Such determination to avoid the everyday and the commonplace deserves a round of applause.
