MAD! by Sparks

If the world is a cafe, its ridiculous patrons babbling ridiculously all day long, then Ron Mael is the guy on his own in the corner that you don't notice, quietly sipping his coffee. But he's watching, listening, making notes. Those notes become songs for his band, the legendary Sparks, to be sung by his brother Russell in his unmistakeable falsetto.

Despite the efforts of Edgar Wright's superb 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers, which introduced the duo to a wider audience than ever before, the exact creative dynamic between the siblings remains inscrutable, as mysterious and unknowable as their private lives.

The one thing we know for certain is that Ron Mael is one of our most acutely perceptive observers of social mores. In a different discipline – dramaturg, cartoonist, novelist, cineaste, chronicler – he'd be a Moliere, a Hogarth, a Fitzgerald, an Altman, a Swift. He just happens to work within the medium of popular song. Another thing we know for certain is that Russell Mael has the asset of a talent to put those observations across in a uniquely arresting manner, captivating as a frontman and gifted with a countertenor voice of extraordinary range. The alchemy between Ron on keys and Russell on vocals – Two Hands, One Mouth, to invoke the name of one of their tours – is simply what they do. And they've rarely done it better than on MAD!, the band's 28th studio album.

Released in May 2025 on new label home Transgressive Records, MAD! finds Ron and Russell examining cultural phenomena such as branded backpacks, tattoos, performative devotion (whether to a God, a lover, a celebrity or a sports team) and the hegemony of banter. ('Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab' seems to be inspired by the modern-day parable of fake German heiress Anna Delvey, or at least someone very similar: “Will you visit me in Rykers?”)

The satire is never on-the-nose, always retaining enough ambiguity for the listener to fill in the blanks. And the exquisitely unusual lexicon (you won't hear the word 'epistemology' on many other albums this year) and cultural references (“Howard Hughes in Jordan 2s” on lead single 'Do Things My Own Way'), leap out on every listen.

Some perennial Sparks themes are revisited. 'A Long Red Light', a song about thwarted desires and dreams, the world non-consensually pressing Pause on your life, inevitably recalls classics such as 'When Do I Get To Sing My Way?' and 'Your Call Is Very Important To Us, Please Hold'.

Musically there are nods to New Wave, Synthpop, Art Rock and Electronic Opera – all genres Sparks had hands in pioneering, or straight-up invented. When you hear echoes of other artists, from Air to Shostakovich, you remind yourself that they're all people who Sparks influenced in the first place. (Well, maybe not Shostakovich.)

Ultimately, however, MAD! is a modern record, which belongs in, and speaks to, the modern world. Which is all the more remarkable when you consider the vintage of its creators.

Most acts, by the time they've been making music together across seven different decades, would have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing the oldies on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more modern than the occasional Greatest Hits collection.

Sparks aren't most acts. If anything, their rate of productivity has sped up in recent years: since the millennium the duo have released eight new studio albums (including, in 2024, the original Sparks 2013 album recording of Annette), a radio opera (The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman), a side-project (Franz Ferdinand collaboration FFS), a live album, a film musical (2021's Annette, which won a ‘Best Director award for Leos Carax and the Best Original Score at the César Awards for the Maels), and several compilations (notably 2019's career-spanning Past Tense), toured the world numerous times, as well as appearing in the aforementioned The Sparks Brothers. Their laurels remain resoundingly unrested-upon.

Ron Mael (keyboards, songwriting, moustache) and his younger brother Russell (singing, charisma, looks-looks-looks) were born and raised in Los Angeles, and first recorded under the name Urban Renewal Project and subsequently Halfnelson, before settling on the name Sparks in 1972. Despite being mentored and produced by Todd Rundgren and signed by Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, American audiences initially proved unreceptive to Sparks' uniquely arch, ironic aesthetic, and their breakthrough came instead after they relocated to London with a new backing band, scoring a huge hit in 1974 with the cinematic, staccato single 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us', and unleashing full-scale Sparksmania in the UK.

In the decades since, one thing that has never faltered is their commitment to artistic innovation. They've moved through numerous genres and phases, including Art-Glam (1974's mega-selling Kimono My House), Neo-Charleston (1975's Tony Visconti-produced Indiscreet), electronic disco (1979's Giorgio Moroder collaboration No.1 In Heaven, which essentially invented the synth duo), synthpop (1994's glorious Gratuitous Sax & Senseless Violins) and sampler opera (2002's career-rebooting Lil' Beethoven). The only common threads, throughout each era, are the exquisite wit of Ron's lyrics and the complexity of his arrangements, and Russell's heavenly voice.

It's perhaps a result of this restlessness, and their refusal to double down on a safe bet by following the easy commercial path, that Sparks' popularity has been so episodic and unpredictable, both geographically and temporally, their successes springing up across the planet in odd places at odd times. In 1980, for example, they topped the French charts with the sublime 'When I'm With You'. In 1994 the poignant 'When Do I Get To Sing My Way?' reached the German Top 10. And their homeland finally caught on in the Eighties, when they were mistaken by many Americans for New Wave novices.

Belatedly, however, the whole world has woken up to Ron and Russell's genius. They have become regular visitors to the upper echelons of the charts: curiously, the last three Sparks albums (2017's Hippopotamus, 2020's A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip and 2023's The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte) all reached No.7 in the UK. It would be a surprise if MAD! didn't do the same, or even better.

And, after all these years, they continue to break new ground. Their 2025 tour, the first leg of which begins on 8 June in Japan, ends on 8 July in Milan. Although Russell performed in Italy once as part of a Sgt Pepper anniversary concert and both brothers played there with FFS, this will be the first-ever Italian Sparks gig.

MAD! opens with the song 'Do Things My Own Way', a piece of typically forward-facing progressive pop which is the album's lead single and focus track. But it also functions as something of a manifesto for the Maels themselves. Because Sparks are a band who have always, always done things their own way.

Most other musicians, when they've been working for over half a century, are resting on their laurels, basking in the warm glow of their heritage, accepting the odd Lifetime Achievement Award, playing the odd Greatest Hits tour and concentrating on shifting their back catalogue. But Sparks are not most other musicians. They are utterly unique.