As very, very kindly rescued for posterity by davetheschizophrenic....
Good to see the relentlessly odd
Indiscreet getting some much-deserved love. It's a really silly album yet, simultaneously, several songs on it really haunt under my skin... there's something genuinely tortured and tragic in amongst the daft melodrama of 'Without Using Hands' and 'Tits'!
Also clock me up as another fan of the FFS album, at least in parts. I really love 'Things I Won't Get' in particular and the bonus track 'So Many Bridges'.
The strangest thing they've done in recent years is the track 'The Final Derriere' for Guy Maddin's loopy
The Forbidden Room:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YQw6KLJGf8As for their 80s work, I have a serious soft spot for the aggressively flat and tinny
In Outer Space which, weirdly, is the album which finally broke America. If I ever write something comprehensive about "post-irony" I'll make it a case study... it's so consistent and thorough in its shallowness that it ends up investing that very shallowness with a weird emotional depth. Or, less pretentiously, if you listen to just a couple of tracks it feels light and poppy and kinda stupid, very much a lesser Sparks album, but if you listen to the whole thing on repeat it starts to trigger serious melancholia and angst! I don't think it's just me either as I've noted other people say similar things.
Here's a really interesting interview from the period. Appropriately it looks like Andy Warhol is sitting it on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duWEOoZ6BMEInterviewer: "You're still writing about the same rock 'n' roll themes that Elvis created of having a good time of having a good time and going to parties and falling in love but you're putting it in a brand new context."
Ron: "One thing that works to my advantage is that I think that I'm sort of - in a way - emotionally retarded. And that's kind of where I live, in those kind of things. In those "cool places" and parties and all."
hoho.
'Kitty Sneezes' did a project a few years back of reviewing every Sparks album:
http://kittysneezes.com/category/reviews/music/sparks-project/Here's what Alia says about
In Outer Space:
Sparks had taken the glossy, plastic-sounding music made by a few bands around this time (most notably DEVO), and raised it several levels to a plateau of absurdity.
This is not an album filled with great songs, although it does have a few that I consider amongst the best of Sparks. The musical style is a sort of ultra-plastic synthpop. The opening song, “Cool Places,” which was bizarrely something of a hit, introduces the album with a full dose of the sonic and lyrical cheese that endures throughout the entire record... Basically, this is the Troll 2 of albums. By which I mean it’s something of a masterpiece. And not really in an ironic way, either – it can, and should be enjoyed on it’s own terms. This is not one of the best Sparks albums, but it’s a masterpiece anyway.
