Latest news with #JanSportBackpack
Los Angeles Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Sparks Fly: Ron and Russell Mael, beach boys of lotusland, get ‘MAD!' on their latest album
Ron and Russell Mael are that rarest of all breeds, the Los Angeles native. The brothers came of age in the 1960s on L.A.'s Westside — decades before it was '310' or west of the 405 Freeway — because the north/south artery hadn't yet been built. A sporty upbringing of beach volleyball, AM radio tuned to 93 KHJ, and Palisades High School football (for Russell) belie the intellectual cool-cult status the band has held for decades. A status, that in the last few years, after making eclectic, uncompromising and witty albums since 1971, is morphing into something approaching mainstream recognition. The Maels credit the newfound momentum to cinema, specifically the 2021 Edgar Wright documentary 'The Sparks Brothers' and 'Annette,' a film that opened Cannes in 2021 which found the creator-brothers joyful on the red carpet with director Leos Carax and stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard. Up next? A 'half-musical' with John Woo ('Face/Off'). If the musicians' visibility and viability has shifted, Sparks' music remains inventive, brainy and flamboyant pop, often born of sunshiny moments and wistful memories that wend their way into lyrics. But it's hardly nostalgia. 'Perhaps in the themes,' says Ron, 'but in a musical sense, we really try to avoid nostalgia completely.' 'JanSport Backpack,' is a yearning tune with harmonies and a hazily poignant emotional tone akin to the Beach Boys —another band of Westside brothers and musical observers of youth culture. If the narrator laments the JanSport Backpack girl walking away, the love interest in 'My Devotion' has '[her] name written on my shoe,' as Russell sings. 'Maybe it isn't so much nostalgic,' Ron said. 'In some ways, we matured, in some we haven't, so we're still kind of living in an era of writing somebody's name on their shoes.' One tune is a surprising almost-love-letter to a fixture that's the bane of many Golden State warriors' existence — and satirized aptly on the 'Saturday Night Live' sketch 'The Californians': The 405 Freeway. 'I-405' is a frenetic, driving, cinematic journey that perfectly captures the drama and beauty roiling underneath bumper-to-bumper frustration. 'You kind of think of the I-405 in a negative way, because you think of being stuck on it. Everybody has their horror stories about it,' says Ron, perched next to his brother in the lounge area of Russell's bright recording studio, surrounded by the coolest pop culture tchotchkes and collectibles imaginable. 'One time when I was up at the Getty Center, and it was starting to be dusk, with the cars moving it seemed, in its own weird, L.A. kind of way, romantic. Almost like our equivalent, if you really stretch it, to the beautiful rivers in Europe and Japan,' Ron says. 'That was kind of the starting point for the song. If you look at it from a distance, there is kind of a beauty, and I think that's one of the keys to Los Angeles. You have to see things that you kind of think of as mundane in a slightly different way. Like, you go to Europe and things are obviously Art. Period. But here, a car wash or something…' '…We're big fans of supermarkets,' Russell chimes in. 'When they go away, it's kind of sad. Even department stores now are almost becoming a relic of the past. It's like a ghost town in the Beverly Center. All that's going to be gone at some point soon.' If not by gentrification and L.A.'s habit of eating its own, then natural disasters. The Jan. 7 Palisades fire burned part of Ron's high school, and the entirety of the home they lived in with their mother after their father's passing, on Galloway Street in the Palisades. Nearly every house in the entire neighborhood — the Alphabet Streets, a working-class enclave when the Maels lived there — was reduced to a pile of rubble. 'They had some of those aerial shots where they made the grid of the names of the streets, and it was gone. It's hard to comprehend, it was real suburbia there,' says Russell, 'and flat, so you think, 'well, surely that can't burn down.'' Slightly east of the 405, the Maels attended UCLA when culture was at a tipping point. Ron saw some of Jim Morrison's 'kind of impressive' student films at the school, and the brothers recall that, 'UCLA, at the time, had this amazing booking policy; you had Jimi Hendrix and Alice Cooper and Mothers of Invention, Canned Heat. It wasn't considered such a big deal. Just, 'Let's go see that person.' Now you have to go online and mortgage your house to go to see anybody,' says Ron. 'We always loved that kind of music,' adds Russell, 'but we never thought that we would ever be, you know, professional musicians. It's just that was the music that we really loved.' That said, by the age of 5, Ron was taking piano lessons and giving a recital at the Women's Club of Venice, near where the Mael family then resided. At Paul Revere Junior High, Russell won first place at a Shakespeare Festival for his sonnet recitation. Post those halcyon days, the brothers began delving into music together. Russell's powerful, at times operatic, vocals and energetic stage presence proved the perfect foil for Ron's distinctly quirky mien and adroit facility with words and keys. 'I don't know if you go as far as to call it a band,' clarifies Ron. 'It was an attempt at being a band. We played at some dorm thing at UCLA once.' 'We also played a pizza place in Westwood,' Ron remembers. 'Shakey's Pizza,' Russell adds with a laugh. 'We were top-billed that night. Yeah, free pizza. We did the local Westwood circuit and then when we got somewhat better we started playing the Whisky a Go Go a bunch. We were officially Sparks then.' The Sunset Strip, past its Doors days and with hair metal far on the horizon, wasn't especially welcoming to Sparks, though [Whisky founder] Elmer Valentine 'irrationally loved our band,' says Ron. 'The audiences, when they showed up, they really didn't like us and we were really way too loud. But he kept booking us. We would support people like Little Feat.' The L.A. Times reviewed that 1973 show, with critic Richard Cromelin noting that Sparks' 'highly stylized attitude is not complemented by the necessary abandon.' That observation may ring true for some, but for Sparks, ultimately that 'abandon' wasn't and isn't necessary. The energy of beguiling songs like 'Angst in My Pants' and 'This Town Ain't Big Enough For the Both of Us,' belted out with Russell's ebullient, pitch-perfect vocals, carry the always dynamic live show. Over the last four years, the Maels are glad to shake the long-held best-kept-secret tag, grateful to 'Annette' and 'The Sparks Brothers' for the boost. 'They kind of attracted people who were coming to us from the film area; they didn't know about the band. It's a new, younger audience, really diverse,' Russell says. The lineup's last few albums are the most meaningful to that sector. 'Going back to say, [1974's] 'Kimono My House,' for them, it's not meaningful in the same kind of way as somebody who was there at that time,' the singer says. 'It's really healthy that their focal point isn't like the 'golden era of whenever' that might have been the '70s in London or the '80s in L.A. or any point in between.' New eyes on the band have elicited a seemingly increased enthusiasm and energy that's perhaps unexpected from seasoned septuagenarians. Unlike the Gallaghers, the Davieses, and many other brotherly duos in rock, the Maels present a united front. If the brothers are coy and circumspect about their personal lives, their working relationship is slightly less obtuse. Slightly. We're in the room where their latest, 'MAD!,' (released Friday) was created, and while the album credits both with lyrics and production, Ron is the main wordsmith. There's seemingly not much back-and-forth on the lyrical themes or specifics. 'I hear about it on the day it's time to start singing,' says Russell. 'There's a 'here's your lyrics, sir.'' That said, Sparks' seeming manifesto, 'Do Things My Own Way' which starts the album, is clearly a statement of the duo's longtime purpose, Russell singing, 'Unaligned / Simply fine / Gonna do things my own way.' So would it ever be 'our own way'? The Maels laugh. 'Not as long as I'm writing the songs,' quips Ron. 'Good question, though,' says Russell with a smile. ''We witnessed the breakup of Sparks,'' Ron says with a laugh. 'On the 'Greatest Hits' album, we can do a version that's 'ours.''
Scotsman
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
MAD! by Sparks review: 'fresh and audacious'
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... From where does Sparks elixir of creativity spring? The Mael brothers reach their 28th studio album sounding as fresh and audacious as they did 50 years ago. According to Ron and Russell, their modus operandi is to imagine the album they should be making at their age and stage and then produce the exact opposite. Sparks | Contributed Thus, the onetime glam pop ingénues embrace lo-fi electro punk on MAD!'s opening track Gonna Do Things My Own Way with its garagey mantra, classic Sparks rhyming couplets and shooting synthesizers. Squint at it a certain way and it sounds like another provocative US duo, Suicide. Hit Me, Baby also uses a grungey punk sound, fuzz guitar, vaulting vocals and a strong percussive edge to make its latently political plea to wake up from a nightmare. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Ron remains dedicated to the art of writing a song about any old ephemera. JanSport Backpack is pure kitchen sink baroque, obsessing over said accessory, while 1-405 Rules is a curveball LA story, comparing the Californian highway to the great rivers of the world with urgent, melodramatic orchestral backing. The wonderfully named Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab addresses the desperate horror show of influencer consumption with angry stabs of synthesizers before a dubby beat kicks in. Don't Dog It offers philosophical bathos on the dancefloor ('shake it thusly and you'll see the light') but there are also moments of less quirky insight.
Forbes
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Sparks On Their New Album ‘MAD!' And 5 Decades Of Brotherly Musical Harmony
Sparks: (L-R) Ron and Russell Mael. There's a song from the new Sparks album MAD! that in some way perfectly sums up the 50-year-plus career of the legendary musical duo of brothers Russell and Ron Mael. With such lyrics as 'Got the fuel/Broke the rules,' 'My advice/No advice' and 'I don't care,' the track 'Do Things My Own Way' speaks of the Maels' philosophy of always following one' own creative muse rather than what is commercially fashionable. 'When we did our first album with Todd Rundgren [for 1972's Sparks], he always instilled in us, 'Stick to your own vision,'' says singer Russell Mael. ''Don't veer off course because you've got an amazingly strong viewpoint and personality and character to what you do and don't water it down.'' And so, we've kind of adopted that stance from the beginning. We really feel it's important that you just stick to your creative impulses. So we feel that that song encapsulates that spirit.' 'Do Things My Own Way' is among the many standout songs on MAD!, Sparks' 28th studio album and the Los Angeles-based duo's debut release on the indie label Transgressive Records. The new record, due out this Friday, features the hallmarks of Sparks' sound: a distinct amalgamation of eccentric lyrics and art rock. Keyboardist Ron Mael says there's no thematic concept going into making MAD!, as with a majority of Sparks' previous albums. 'We kind of start with the songs and see what the direction is,' he says, 'and that's kind of where we go. We hope that an album in the end makes some sense, even if it's not something that can be really verbalized.' Sparks' songs have a strong cinematic aspect (more on that later), as heard on 'JanSport Backpack,' another track unveiled ahead of the album's release. The JanSport in the song serves as a visual symbol of a relationship in trouble. 'We spent quite a bit of time in Japan, and there were a lot of really stylish girls walking around with JanSport backpacks,' says Ron. 'So you think, 'Well, what song could be built around that particular image of seeing a girl from behind wearing a JanSport backpack?' and making it like the sadness of a relationship that maybe isn't quite working, and the JanSport backpack being the image of the girl walking away from you.' The satirical nature of Sparks' songs continues with the haunting and noirish 'Running Up a Tab at the Hotel for the Fab,' which Ron says is about a not-so-financially-well-off guy who is trying to impress a girl. 'He shows her a good time at a hotel that's way beyond his means and goes through minibars and dinners and everything,' he says. 'But in the end, he has to pay the price. And so he's sent to Rikers. But he said it's all worth it if she visits him in prison and he hopes he'll be on parole soon. So it has a semi-happy ending.' Not many artists would pay a homage or tribute to Los Angeles' (and in general the country's) busiest and congested freeway. But in the world of Sparks, the I-405, which serves as the title of a song from MAD!, serves as a symbol of city pride. 'It was kind of an ode to our freeway that, from certain vantage points, has a really beautiful quality to it,' Russell says, 'especially at night, if you see all the taillights stuck bumper to bumper with each other in gridlock, it takes on its own beauty. So in a way, it's our Seine River, our magical spot for an Angeleno.' Another intriguing album track is the haunting operatic-like 'A Long Red Light,' which is essentially a repetition of the lyric 'a long red light.' 'It was actually a literal intention,' Ron says, 'but it can be viewed as like the hope that something will turn green in a more personal life kind of way with another person.' 'The intent, at least when it came up,' Russell adds, 'was to make it more literal, that the frustration of sitting there at this red light. We like taking a really specific incident that everyone's encountered, but turning it into something more than that.' In a break from the duo's usual irony, 'Drowned in a Sea of Tears,' another of MAD!'s singles, is one of Sparks' most dramatic and heartbreaking songs. Showcasing Russell's falsetto singing, it also touches on a relationship at the crossroads. 'It is sincere and semi-tragic,' Russell says of the song's story. 'We did a video for it, too, that we think captured the mood really well of that relationship. [The woman and I in the clip] do a little quick sort of dance and then with a bunch of other more beautiful women in the background that fade off into the distance. And then she realizes that that was one of the happy moments they had together. Then it quickly ends as everybody fades away out of the image…and then she literally is drowning in a sea of tears in her car.' MAD! ends on an uplifting note with 'Lord Have Mercy,' the brothers' favorite track from the album; Ron jokingly says it shows him being a softie at heart. 'It was one of the ones that was written in a more traditional way, where I just had the song and we brought it into the studio,' he recalls. 'I had the title, but I couldn't figure out a way not to be that we were preaching. So it was very hard to find a stance. And so I finally figured out that maybe if it's somebody overhearing somebody else singing that song in a certain sense, then it would distance us from that.' Sparks will be touring starting in June with dates in Japan and Europe, followed by stops in North America this September. In addition to their recording and touring work, the brothers have been busy getting their film project with legendary director John Woo, off the ground. It's the brothers' first cinema-related work since writing the screenplay and music for the 2021 movie musical Annette, directed by Leos Carax. The collaboration happened by chance when the Maels came across a Los Angeles Times piece in which Woo said he had always wanted to do a musical. Says Russell: 'We thought, 'John Woo, a musical? That is really odd.' And we said, 'We've got to contact him' — but then, thinking he probably won't respond to what we do or our sensibility. He lives in L.A., which was fortunate. He came to our studio, sat through the whole two hours of the whole story, and said, 'This is amazing. I want to do it.' And we went, 'Wow.'' 'We've been working with John Woo for the past year-and-a-half revising some elements of the screenplay that we wrote,' he also says. 'But he's so sold on the project and the music, which seems so unlikely that John Woo would respond to a Sparks musical. But when you're with him, he's so engaged in the project. It's really exciting.' The brothers' experience with Annette was a confidence booster for them to continue on movie projects. 'It's such a dream for us,' says Ron, 'because we are huge cinema buffs, to actually see something that you wrote on a screen. But also even the process of it is something that it's totally different than working on your own record, where you're the commander-in-chief of the whole thing. 'With a film,' he continues, 'it's such a collaborative process where you're putting your trust into somebody who really has faith in something you wrote. And John Woo has come up with ideas and he's such a visual person. So we really feel confident in being able to come through with the writing of the project.' Sparks' influence on future generations of musical artists (as discussed in the Edgar Wright 2021 documentary The Sparks Brothers) continues: the British group the Last Dinner Party recently covered Sparks' classic hit 'This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us' from the duo's 1974 album Kimono in My House . 'We read so much about them,' Russell says of the Last Dinner Party, 'that so many reviews said, 'Hey, there's this group that sounds a lot of the spirit of Sparks.' Then we checked them out and we really liked them. And so then we found out, in fact, they did 'This Town." It's cool that there's a group like that in the U.K. and that has been inspired to some extent by what we've done. It's great.' Sparks: (L-R) Russell and Ron Mael. After 50 years-plus, the musical partnership between Russell and Ron remains strong as ever — a rarity in the history of sibling musical acts mostly known for their tense relationships. 'We share a sensibility about things,' Ron says. 'You can have discussions about individual sounds or whatever. But as far as the overall vision, it's something that we have continued. It's kind of unspoken now. It's just something that we can read each other's minds when we're working on things. 'And maybe just in a more practical way, our roles within the band don't really overlap. So neither of us is being squashed down by the other's position, which I guess has contributed to some frictions in other situations in bands. It's just being able to do things without having to talk about them so much and doing them is really such a relief.' 'For our situation, it's worked as a positive thing,' Russell adds. 'And yeah, we'll keep being brothers for a while more.'
Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Sparks: ‘We can't understand why other brother acts have so much trouble'
There is a song on the new Sparks album, the appropriately titled Mad!, called JanSport Backpack. 'She wears a JanSport backpack,' observes Russell Mael, who at 76 has somehow retained the borderline hysterical countertenor that first fascinated a nation when Sparks performed This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us on Top of the Pops in 1974. John Lennon was so stunned by the sight of the pretty, curly-haired Russell performing the operatic hit with his unsmiling, toothbrush moustache-sporting brother, Ron, he is said to have called up Ringo Starr and told him that Marc Bolan was doing a song with Adolf Hitler. JanSport Backpack is typical Sparks: taking a mundane aspect of life and imbuing it with significance of preposterous proportions.
