The British journalist Miranda Sawyer was responsible yesterday for the group Sparks explaining their vision of popular music in the last half century for an hour, in their capacity as protagonists and exceptional witnesses.
They did it taking advantage of the fact that they have landed in Barcelona for the Primavera Sound festival, where they will perform today Friday (7:55 p.m., Amazon Music stage), although yesterday afternoon they expanded on the Center de Cultura Contemporà nia de Barcelona, ​​which hosts the activities of the Spring Pro.
And there were the unmistakable (and septuagenarian) Californian brothers Mael, the composer and keyboardist Ron (the one with the mustache) and the singer Russell. At first they put glam into orbit with their acclaimed Kimono my house (1974), they took synth pop out of their hats with No 1 song in heaven (1979) or they took out rhythmic gems working with the confessed “maestro” Giorgio Moroder.
And now a week ago they just released a new album with unpublished material, The girl is crying in her latte (the 26th studio album of their career), which has generally received excellent reviews. To this constant fine-tuning – their recent soundtrack for the film Annette by Leos Carax is another remarkable sample – is added that they are authors of iconic songs such as This town isn’t big enough for both of us or The number one song in heaven.
Yesterday both agreed that their perseverance is due to “always doing what we like, above tastes and fashions.” And that, above all, “we see that after all these years what we love is pop, and we have also verified that it is the best music because it has no limits, the creative possibilities are unlimited.”
His seal and also his imprint are wide and real. Over the years, in addition to the high quality bar and fascinating stylistic variety of his records, “we are amazed to see how so many colleagues confess that they like our music and it has marked them; He blocked us at first,†Ron confessed convincingly. He is not exaggerating: from Beck to New Order, through Duran Duran or, more recently, Jack Antonoff or Vince Carter, the list is long and very heterogeneous.
To the logical question about the durability of the group as such and also about the good harmony between the two brothers, Ron opined on the latter that “it is of considerable importance that our roles are differentiated, me working the composition and the keyboards, and Russell bringing the pieces to vocal life. It seems like a no-brainer but it’s fundamental.”
And Russell was even more concise when summarizing the good health of the project more than half a century after its birth: “passion for what we do from the first moment to today, be it music, cinema or other things. Things happen, not you don’t plan or foresee, but above all we’ve never stopped doing things, we’ve never sat around waiting to see what was going to happen”.
After that hour of talk, reflections aloud and a brief final colloquium, the title of the meeting was much better understood: “All roads lead to Sparks: an analysis of the music of the last 50 years”
