Sparks at the Sydney Opera House, Photograph by Ravyna Jassani
For all their constant reinventions and subversions, the secret weapon of art pop duo Sparks has always been their sly but deep sincerity.
Yes, brothers Russell and Ron Mael have songs with titles like “Dicking Around” and “Running up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab,” and yes, one of their biggest hits, “Music You Can Dance To,” is a dig at a record label exec who moaned that the Maels just needed to write, well, music that people could dance to.
But their anarchic jokes only land because the pair really mean them, and the straight-faced onstage persona of keyboardist Ron Mael – unsmiling, imperious – belies the fact that these aren’t gags you’re always meant to laugh at. One of their greatest songs, “When Do I Get to Sing My Way?” has a slightly cloying, comedic quality, no doubt about it. But it was also written at a time of creative uncertainty for the band, when it really did seem open-ended whether they’d ever get to sing “My Way” – or if anyone would listen to them when they did. So you laugh, but you also know that the gag comes from a place of tremendous emotion; a knock-knock joke with all the profundity and beauty of a Buddhist koan.
The Mael brothers’ depth of feeling took centre stage at their Sydney Opera House show for Vivid LIVE. The crowd was elated from the moment that the band strode onstage, frontman Russell dressed in a silk polka dot outfit that one heckler referred to as his “pyjamas.” And the diehards – i.e., every person in attendance – only got more energised from there. By the end, the crowd was practically levitating, and the Maels seemed taken aback by the ecstatic quality of the crowd: Ron broke his usual deadpan character to tell the audience that such nights “gave them the strength to push further.”
Nor were the roars from the audience reserved only for the biggest hits. Sure, the one, two, three punch of “Music That You Can Dance To,” “The Number One Song in Heaven” and “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us” got the entire place on its feet. But the audience was just as receptive to some of the lesser-known gems. The melancholy, rollicking “Sherlock Holmes” was a triumph early in the set, while “Baby, Can I Invade Your Country,” off 2006’s overlooked Hello Young Lovers album, lit up the audience like wildfire through bracken.
Russell Mael is in his late 70s; Ron just turned 80. You would forgive performers at that age if they felt the temptation to relax a little, churning out slightly tired retreads of past glories. But Sparks’ most recent album, MAD!, released last year, is even more boundary-pushing in many ways than their 1972 debut. They have never stood still, and they’ve never allowed themselves to grow bored: some of the most enjoyably abrasive, experimental songs in the set came from albums released in the last five years.
It’s widely acknowledged that Sparks were ahead of their time, and that they’re only now getting recognised as one of the most impactful, innovative acts of 70s and 80s. But if their Sydney Opera House show proved anything, it’s that such an acknowledgement doesn’t go far enough. Some of the most iconic bands in the world only had ten, 15 years of true creative invention before they petered out. Sparks, somehow, seem more energised, more extraordinary than they ever did.
The band wryly acknowledged that fact with the final song of the set, “All That.” The chorus might as well be the motto of a band who have spent more than half a century reinventing what music can do: “All that we’ve done,” Russell sang in high falsetto, “we’ve lost, we’ve won / All that, all that and more.”
Sparks performed at the Sydney Opera House, on stolen Gadigal land, on Monday 25 May.
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