Sparks - Introducing Sparks

Those nice Mael boys’ AOR curate’s egg finally out on CD

Unloved then, overlooked now, Introducing Sparks was an opportunity by their American label, Columbia, to throw a lot of money at the group to attempt to replicate their UK success. By 1977 those days seemed something of a distant memory. Exceptionally polished and recorded in a big studio, it contains members of Toto, Lee Ritenour and the soon-to-be backing singers from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. At times it doesn’t know whether they want to be Supertramp or Springsteen. “It sounds somewhat bereft of personality,” Russell Mael told RC in 2003. That’s about the size of it. Still, nothing by Sparks can be a total failure and this has its gems: A Big Surprise, the straight fist-in-air anthem Forever Young, the amusing blues of Girls On The Brain and the tres-Sparksian Goofing Off are worthy of their place in the Sparks canon. The glossiest the group ever sounded, Introducing Sparks was almost totally ignored on both sides of the Atlantic. At least it forced them to rethink, get working with Giorgio Moroder and come out with the glorious No 1 In Heaven album in 1979.

L’il Beethoven | LBRCDRON 1/LBRCDRUSS 1

Reviewed by Daryl Easlea
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