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25 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WE ARE CLEARLY ELSEWHERE, March 8, 2006
How we got here, I do not know. But Sparks has brought us to a place that no one has ever been. Their seeming obsessive penchant for exhaustive variations -- sometimes mistaken as simple repetition by some listeners -- would take a full course in musicology to understand. Especially here, where countless influences and forms are referenced and subsequently transformed into sheer capital "M" Music by the Mael brothers. In a post "Lil' Beethoven" world, where music fans seek little more than comfort and solace, we listeners can't even begin to categorize what's going on here. And there's really no need to try. "Hello Young Lovers" is music complete and unto itself. It is the latest battle won in the long war against cliche.
The lyrics are darker, more pointed, funny in a "gee, that hurts" way. And the pieces themselves are literally without precedent. Just a few moments with "Here Kitty" will expose you to the only extant example of a single piece of music that includes some shaded swing inflections, a burst of musique concret and a string passage easily worthy of Haydn. This ain't no collage: this is a perfectly constructed piece, without a hint of the irrelevant or nonessential. We really are somewhere else. The song form, dating back to early renaissance madrigals, has rarely taken such a nearly incomprehensible leap forward. While popular musics in general continue to dabble in the smallest possible degrees of market-safe variation-on-the-familiar, Sparks has simply jumped ahead, over, out, up, you name it. They are out front and all alone. This isn't funny anymore -- this is so good it's scary.
"Hello Young Lovers" is music that lives outside categories, free from genre.
And what matters more is that, for thirty plus years, Sparks has consistently refused the easy road. While they've perfected existing forms and originated others, they have flat out refused to repeat their own formulas or to wallow in that most prized trough of the music industry: predictability. Instead, Sparks keeps teasing, stretching, pulling, pushing, tearing, inventing and astonishing. But never bending.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ne plus ultra, February 24, 2006
It's been a long time since I've been inclined to apply the word "glorious" to an album. But their 20th album is nothing short of a masterpiece from perhaps the greatest unsung band in all of rock. I wasn't sure at first that Hello Young Lovers was superior to their previous work, Lil' Beethoven (superb in its own right), but I can't keep this thing out of my player, and every repetition uncovers new magic.
I've been a Sparks fan since they were Halfnelson and I heard their very first album (yes, I'm sixty years old and still rockin'). They almost lost me when they went synth in the 80s, but recently I've been rethinking even those "lost years". It doesn't matter though, what they've done in the past; what matters is the great stuff they're doing today. It's more adventurous, and has more true musicality than the last dozen albums by their tired, repetitive peers.
Ultimately, Lil Beethoven sounds almost primitive compared to the musical variety and multi-dubbed vocal tracks in Hello Young Lovers. Russell's voice has never been better, and the electronic treatments never mask what a truly fantastic singer he really is.
"Dick Around" opens the album with a preview of all the surprises Ron and Russell have in store for us. One of the song's great moments is when Dean Menta's sizzling guitar enters the mix and Ron starts building to a climax that evolves into a mournful ballade of things lost. One of the way Ron "plays" with song structure is by almost arbitrarily sticking in what might pass for a refrain at various unpredictable spots throughout.
"Perfume" has a great feel-good crunch from Dean Menta's guitar, with Ron's rollicking piano adding flashes of color to a basically simple, hook-heavy little ditty. It's one of those "oh-no-I-can't-get-it-out-of-my-head" pieces that you won't mind taking up residence in your cells.
I guess even a masterpiece has to have a weakest track, and for me that track is "The Very Next Fight". It's not a bad track, mind, but it seems to meander where the rest of the cuts drive, thrash, slither, propel, whoosh their way through. The repetition here does contribute to the circular theme of all the bad stuff coming back around again.
"(Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country" uses some familiar lyrics ("oh say can you see?") over a whiff of skiffle and a smatter of Broadway to relate sex to my fine country's penchant for police actions and unwarranted invasions. Very slyly funny stuff.
The more I listen to "Rock, Rock, Rock", the more it seems to be the peak of the album, appropriate since it sits right in the middle of the tracks. At first listen it sounds like a development of the similarly-themed "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?" from Lil' Beethoven. Musically, though, it's far more textured and complex, the kind of anthemic music we haven't heard from Sparks in a long time. Tammy's percussion effects add a lot to the effect.
"Metaphor" is a cheerful lil tune noting that "chicks dig, dig, metaphors". Only Ron Mael could find a relationship between a literary device and the pursuit of women. "Use them wisely, use them well, and you'll never know the hell of loneliness." Indeed!
"Waterproof" is deceptively simple, but if you listen to the song's development you'll realize how impressive the song's growth is, and when it bursts into the final chugging verse you'll be jumping around the room with Russell, celebrating the fact that he's impervious to the waterworks his lady can produce.
"Here Kitty" is a lesser but still fun contribution, describing how a fireman meets women by rescuing their cats from trees, until, uh-oh, he encounters a cat bigger than he is...he still wins the girl however.
Shorter by a couple of minutes than any other song on the album, "There's No Such Thing As Aliens" might at first seem almost like a throw-away, but there are more musical ideas tossed off effortlessly than in The Beatles entire oeuvre.
And that leaves us with "As I Sit to Play the Organ at Notre Dame Cathedral". Others have described what the lyrics convey, the lust of a cathedral organist seeking a like spirit in the congregation, but the changes this song goes through are simply astonishing. Ron has utterly thrown away "the book" on song-writing, and created a propulsive, compulsive piece of music, almost literally a highly-compressed entire opera in a single song. While "Rock,Rock,Rock" moves me more, even that song can't compare to the incredible musical changes wrought by "As I Sit to Play..."
Sadly, Hello Young Lovers won't be recognized as the most audacious, the most inventive, the most articulate and witty album of the decade (at least until Sparks' next album). That's what it is though. Consider my five stars doubled. Take a listen; you'll be hooked.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sparks Flying High, April 1, 2006
I must confess that when Sparks first appeared, and even as they gained recognition, I remained oblivious to them. So, I'm one of those people who "discovered" them when "Lil' Beethoven" came out in 2004, and my regret for waiting so long was only assuaged by the magic I encountered.
If "Lil' Beethoven" struck me with its inventiveness and flair, "Hello Young Lovers" simply bowl me over. The operatic drama that they are so facile with, the glorious choruses and poignant lyrics they are already famous for are, in this album, augmented by edgy Rock passages that make "Young Lovers" one of the best things that came out this year.
"Dick Around," "Perfume," "Metaphor" and "(Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country"-to name a very few-are proof, at least to me, of how awe-inspiring this set is.
If you know them, I can't imagine that you won't be impressed. If you, like me, missed the Sparks train until now, this is definitely a place to get on and be struck by the creative vein and satiric talent these two guys can muster.
Dive into "Hello Young Lovers." You'll thank me
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