With over 20 albums to their name, Sparks are certainly entitled to having cut the occasional clinker, although it is hard to visualize any album ever being more disappointing than this one. Recorded in 1976, shortly after the brothers' decision to abandon their adopted U.K. homeland and return to America, it is the sound of Sparks driving straight for the Stateside jugular, an album of almost quintessential mid-'70s slickness, recorded with sessionmen and -- if you want to compare it, song for song, to any past album they had made -- written with the same depth of commitment. The occasional number does snag your attention for a moment, and the closing "Over the Summer" is one of the greatest Beach Boys pastiches ever recorded. But we don't look to Sparks for pastiche, we look to them for manic originality, madcap commerciality, and blistering brilliance, and there's just one song here that steps far enough out of the groove to even hint at the brothers' true genius. "Goofing Off" rides a frenetic violin through a lunatic paean to the joys of, indeed, goofing off, and you can't help wondering if it's also a confession of sorts. Because the rest of the album was almost certainly recorded with Ron and Russell wishing they were doing something else instead and, no matter how complete your Sparks collection is, if you don't own this record, you really won't miss it. Oh, and it has a ghastly cover as well.
© Dave Thompson /TiVo