Sparks’ ‘Hippopotamus’ comes to life
The venerable L.A. band showcases more than half of its smart new album at El Rey.
It’s quite possible that nobody more fully appreciates and celebrates the role that pop culture plays in our lives than L.A.’s own relentlessly and gloriously perceptive Sparks.
At Saturday’s opening of the duo’s three-night stand at the El Rey Theatre (which continues Tuesday), brothers Ron and Russell Mael served up song upon song with canny references to French chanteuse Edith Piaf, a ’58 Volkswagen microbus, Sherlock Holmes, Scandinavian design, the census and myriad other wonders of the modern world.
Lest it sound like the group deals only in triviality, the duo opened with one of several songs from its characteristically smart new album, “Hippopotamus,” one in which they imagine a Supreme Deity’s likely exasperated response to the never-ending stream of pleas and prayers from humankind, crystallized in the song ’s title, “What the Hell Is It This Time?”
The Mael siblings, who released their debut album in 1971, have always been more fascinated with what’s ahead than with where they’ve been, and this manifested Saturday in an 80minute set that included more than half the songs from the new album.
Like the most astute of pop’s songwriters over the decades, the Maels spot eternal truths in the conditions of the moment. Another new song, “Life With the Macbeths,” could be read as a commentary on the reality TV-like atmosphere these days in the White House, but the brothers acknowledge there’s always been subterfuge and duplicity in the halls of power, only the cast of players changes.
One great joy of Sparks’ music is how it consistently transforms the conventions of pop music-making, turning clichés upside down and inside out to keep songs fresh. Over the years the Mael brothers have weaved their way through widely varied sonic territories from progressive rock and pioneering electronic dance music to rhythmic pop and contemporary art song.
Through it all, they use pop culture reference points to help with accessibility. “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way,’” from 1994’s “Gratuitous Sax & Violins” album, recognizes the way an average Joe or Jane might relate to Frank Sinatra’s life-encapsulating ode. And they were hip enough to fold in the strikingly weird version from the Sex Pistols’ tragicomic bassist, Sid Vicious: “So when do I get to do it my way / When do I get to feel like Sid Vicious felt / When do I get to sing ‘My Way’ / In heaven or hell?”
As always, Russell and Ron Mael create a magical yin-yang presence on stage. Lead singer Russell is all Id as he bounds about the stage with microphone in hand, while Ron stoically works his keyboard with nary the blink of an eye or twitch of his Ronald Colman mustache.
Reaching back for one of their earliest radio hits, “This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us” from 1974, they reminded us of their ability to pile up a dizzying stream of lyrics — an approach that stretches back at least as far as Gilbert & Sullivan musically and to Shakespeare grammatically.
That mind- and ear-boggling lyric barrage is plugged into a wildly careening melody. Few, after all, have the extraordinary vocal range Russell possess and, at 69, he gives no evidence of diminished capacity of his dexterity.
Since 2003’s strikingly ambitious “Lil’ Beethoven” album, Sparks spent the better part of a decade exploring ways to evoke rock’s power with its electric guitar-bass-drums instrumentation, relying on synthesized and orchestrated musical motifs. With “Hippopotamus,” however, the brothers reembraced the rock band idea and are touring with a five-member group featuring two guitarists, a keyboardist, bassist and drummer.
That brought together the best of the two worlds, with some of the “Lil’ Beethoven”-era material recast with greater visceral punch while still tapping the methods that made the recorded versions so fascinating.
“My Baby’s Taking Me Home” consists almost entirely of that one five-word phrase, but the Maels evoke a world of emotion from that singular expression through a circular construction of the chord progression that regularly returns. Like a tide flowing in, out and in again, the phrase gains potency with each repetition and a long, steady dynamic crescendo that builds to an intensely dramatic climax.
With the full ensemble outfitted in collarless shirts with horizontal black-andwhite stripes, the band looked as if it had just come from a shopping spree at the Marcel Marceau Collection. Late in the show, Ron, 72, finally stood up from his piano stool, walked to the front of the stage, removed his horizontal-striped blazer, loosened his tie and let loose his one display of onstage athleticism with a wild dance that’s been a crowd favorite for decades.
At the show’s end, Ron and Russell made heartfelt statements of thanks to the hometown crowd, before taking their leave — and for once, there was nothing remotely ironic or sarcastic about it.