TOP OF THE POPS

Edgar picks his five fave Sparks albums…

Kimono My House 1974

This is their breakthrough album. It really is all killer. There’s not a bad track on it. I constantly come back to it as a favourite album. It opens with ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us’, but that’s not the peak! It keeps operating at that level, which is really unusual.

No. 1 In Heaven 1979

This album is pretty revolutionary. There weren’t really any other existing bands that had ditched their guitars for an all-electronic format. Anybody listening to that album can see the seeds of so many other acts of the next 30 years. And even though it’s 1979 synth technology, it still sounds fucking great.

Angst In My Pants 1982

This album didn’t really do anything in the UK, but it’s their most famous album in the States. It’s their New Wave album. Again, it just doesn’t put a foot wrong – it’s thrilling and funny and funky all the way through. It’s the album that has the infamous cover of Ron and Russell getting married.

Lil’ Beethoven 2002

Lil’ Beethoven is another complete reinvention of the band, where they go into this neoclassical vein of Ron’s orchestrations and Russell’s vocals, and build around this idea of making little social observations into massive operas. This album is bold and ambitious, sharp and funny. You can never count these guys out.

Hippopotamus 2017

Hippopotamus was their return to a pop-song format, after doing some more expansive work like The Seduction Of Ingmar Bergman, or even the operatic stuff on Lil’ Beethoven. Hippopotamus is inspired by their time with Franz Ferdinand. It was their first album since 1975 to get into the top 10 in the UK. JG