For a band 24 albums deep, Sparks sound suspiciously like they're just getting started. On A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, they come off more vital, more present, and somehow more modern than bands a third their age. When I tell Russell Mael I’m jealous of anyone discovering Sparks for the first time, he laughs — but he gets it.
“It’s a really unique situation,” he says. “We have fans that are just discovering the band now — they go back and go, ‘How is it possible this band has 24 albums?’ Because this new one sounds too fresh and too modern.”
Which is probably the greatest trick Sparks have ever pulled: remaining deeply themselves while somehow sounding like the future.
Russell and Ron Mael approach each record like it might be someone’s first, because it might be. “We don’t have a traditional career arc,” he says. “That’s probably what keeps us motivated.”
And that motivation shows. Drip is packed with sharp hooks, unpredictable melodies, and characters that feel pulled out of some dream-state sitcom. There’s a guy obsessed with his lawnmower. A person who can only communicate in onomatopoeia. And a narrator politely — but firmly — begging the world not to implode: Please Don’t F** Up My World.*
“The lyrics became pretty prescient,” Russell admits. Written before the pandemic, many of the songs now carry unintended — and unsettling — new weight. “‘I’m Toast,’ for example… suddenly it means something else. It wasn’t about the world falling apart. But now?” He trails off. “It is.”
That final track — with a children’s choir sweetly repeating the titular plea — calls back to their 1974 ballad Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth, but amps the urgency. “Maybe it’s even more aggressive,” he says. “The speaker is saying, ‘Hey, this is for real.’”
Sparks never go for obvious. Even their use of profanity feels strangely wholesome. “We try not to use it gratuitously,” Russell explains. But when they do, as on the chorus of iPhone, it matters. “We toyed with lines like, ‘Would you kindly set down your iPhone,’ but it didn’t hit. ‘Put your f***ing iPhone down and listen to me’ — that’s how we actually talk.”
And as ever, the delivery is dizzyingly complex. “Ron writes melodies that any rational singer would avoid,” he laughs. “But there’s a joy in that. A song like Onomatopoeia is just… it’s anti-cynical. It’s pure joy.”
Still, Sparks aren’t content with just reinventing themselves on record. They’ve also written a full-blown movie musical. Annette — starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, directed by Holy Motors auteur Leos Carax — is sung top to bottom, in true Sparks fashion.
“What started as a concept album in our living room became a full-scale film with A-list actors,” Russell says. “Adam Driver is singing the part I had been singing for eight years.”
As if that weren’t enough, Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver) has also been quietly working on a Sparks documentary for two years. “He’s got a three-hour cut right now,” Russell notes, with genuine awe. “He’s interviewed everyone — musicians, directors, actors — all talking about Sparks.”
Both the film and the doc were nearly completed before COVID-19 shut the world down, and the plan is to premiere the latter at Sundance. In the meantime, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip remains the best kind of accidental time capsule — a record that captures the anxiety, absurdity, and occasional hilarity of being alive right now.
“We’ve always cared deeply about what we do,” Russell says. “And I think that shows.”
It does.
Listen to the interview above and then check out the videos below.
