SPARKS Inventive pop oddballs return.

A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip

Some veteran acts retain so much goodwill from fans that they can pretty much do no wrong. Just don’t ask anyone to name a song they’ve written recently. Sparks are a case in point. Their arch synth-pop influenced generations of wry stylists, but despite 2017’s ‘Hippopotamus’ breaching the Top 10, even die-hard fans’ “best of” lists are unlikely to feature much since the early 1980s.

Still, the septuagenarian duo show here that they can still turn out some neat nuggets of intriguing quirk pop. The minor acoustic chords of Left Out In The Cold have an alluring, faintly Hispanic flavour, while Self-Effacing is similarly infectious and laced with Russell Mael’s vocal melodramatics.

Elsewhere, though, they try too hard. Stravinsky’s Only Hit is a full of cod-operatic flourishes but completely without tune. When, on Lawnmower, Mael’s vocal line – ‘My girlfriend is from Andover, Andover, she puts up with my lawnmower, lawnmower’ – is backed by plinky electronica and barber-shop harmonies, the result is original, distinctive, and quite curious. But will you feel any inclination to hear it again after this album is over?