Sparks
Propaganda

THE REVIEW

Regarding this album, I read somewhere that "If Goebbels had done propaganda this well, we would all now live under the Third Reich." Propaganda, from November 1974, is an excellent album, even if its fame today is perhaps a bit overshadowed by its superb neighbor Kimono My House, the undisputed masterpiece of the Sparks, released in May of the same year. But Propaganda, with its consistently high-level songs and no fillers, is hardly inferior to its illustrious predecessor. It’s an album that holds its own among the glam magna opera, and it’s something more than the Day at the Races to a Night at the Opera, the Pin Ups to an Aladdin Sane, the Samwise Gamgee to a Frodo Baggins.

The mastery of the Mael brothers is unparalleled, and the vocal acrobatics, falsettos, and concoctions of Russell perfectly match the absolute command of charlotte-like Ron's keyboards and the lyrics filled with surreal and over-the-top humor. Eleven shards of frenetic and baroque glam, never cloying and always engaging. A fresh and sparkling album like prosecco with aspirin. Fizzing.

Seriously: apart from Great Cinema, have you ever heard this word used outside of some insipid advertisement? The ones with the acid/pastel tones of the mid-'90s, before the 2000s came with their bird droppings colors and the overuse of the word "exclusive"?

An album to listen to always, at home at work at play, smirking behind those who dig from the '70s to pull out the same old things: beautiful for sure, but after a while, what a bore.