Fifty years in and still impossible to pin down, Sparks return with MAD!, a razor-sharp, genre-hopping masterclass in pop absurdity and invention that proves the Mael brothers have absolutely no interest in slowing down.
By the time most artists hit their seventh decade in music, they’re polishing up box sets and raking in the nostalgia tour cash. Not Sparks. With MAD!, their 28th studio album and first for Transgressive Records, the ever-inventive Mael brothers prove once again they’re nowhere near done rewriting the rules of pop music.
Ron (songwriting, piano, inscrutable smirk) and Russell (vocals, charisma, impossibly ageless pipes) Mael have been creating erudite, eccentric musical worlds since Kimono My House took over UK airwaves in 1974. Fifty years on, MAD! reveals them to be sharper, funnier, and weirder than ever. If you’re looking for greatest hits retreads or dad-rock filler, you’re running a comb through the wrong mustache.
The album opens with “Do Things My Own Way,” a rocking, synth-laced statement of intent that doubles as a sly autobiography. Elsewhere, Sparks dissect performative devotion, influencer culture, branded backpacks, and the epistemology of modern identity with their signature wit. “Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab” nods to Anna Delvey-style grift, while “A Long Red Light” channels the bittersweet existential ache of Sparks classics like “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way’?”
The instrumentation veers between art-pop, new wave, and what can only be described as electro-operatic glam rock, but it never feels backward-looking. This is no museum piece, MAD! is most certainly a record of 2025, not 1975. Ron’s lyrics are as cerebral and absurd as ever - an absurd mix of Molière and Monty Python - while Russell’s voice remains a thing of elastic, androgynous beauty. Their chemistry, always mysterious and unspoken, remains pure alchemy.
With the Maels' cinematic renaissance in full swing, thanks in part to Edgar Wright’s 2021 doc The Sparks Brothers and their Leos Carax-directed musical Annette, it’s tempting to call MAD! a victory lap. But that would be missing the point. Sparks aren’t looking back. They’re still racing ahead, and somehow, impossibly, speeding up. Fifty-plus years in, Sparks continue to be the rarest of things, a band who defy genre, era, and expectation. With MAD!, they’re doing it their own way - smarter and madder than ever.