Leave it to Sparks to make a pop record about a hippopotamus in a swimming pool and sound more vital than anyone half their age. “We’ve got to carve our own universe,” Russell Mael says. “The pop world we always loved — it’s not upholding those ideals anymore.” So Sparks did what they always do: they built another world where a hippo, Bosch, and a microbus all float around like characters in a dark fairytale for weird children.
It’s been eight years since their last album, but the Mael brothers haven’t exactly been sitting by the pool themselves. They spent four years writing Annette, a movie musical directed by Leos Carax. “It’s kind of stretching other muscles,” Ron says, “and when you come back to working the way you did before, you feel rejuvenated.”
Rejuvenated is an understatement. Hippopotamus is Sparks in all their grand, operatic, twisted pop glory — part children’s singalong, part existential mind-bender. Does the hippopotamus represent anything? Russell shuts that down fast: “Nope. It’s not a metaphor. It’s just a modern, offbeat short story. In the end, the guy looks at everything in his pool and goes, ‘Isn’t that grand?’”
Only Sparks could turn a backyard pool into a Dadaist punchline. Or drop Edith Piaf into the mix for good measure. “She conveyed her personality so strongly through her music,” Ron says. “And there’s a style of vocal that’s idiosyncratic, beyond the slickness you hear from most singers — even singers you’d consider really good.” Sparks have been doing that for five decades now, giving pop music the care it too often lacks. “It’s not an inferior genre,” Ron says. “People should respect it.”
And for anyone wondering why they still do this? “We just care,” Ron says. “We’re really intense when we’re working on things.” If that means your next bedtime story is about a hippopotamus, a Bosch painting, and a microbus, so be it. Grand indeed.
You can listen to the interview above and then check out "Edit Piaf (Said It Better Than Me)" below!
