EXOTIC CREATURES OF THE DEEP

Unlike the two previous recordings, Exotic Creatures Of The Deep wasn't played as a part of a long tour. Instead, Sparks took a residence at the Carling Islington Academy where the band played each one of their previous twenty albums in chronological order and their entirety! This show streak, coined as Sparks Spectacular, was played from May 16 to June 11 and ended with the premier of Exotic Creatures Of The Deep.

I was unfortunately unable took partake in this truly historical event and only got around to hearing this new album somewhere in late July that same year. At first I really disliked this release because it sounded nothing like the previous two masterpieces. The melodies just weren't there and the whole album just felt flat due to the lack of the classic arrangements and the overall style seemed more like a digress of a sorts.

Fortunately, after a couple of spins, I actually started to get into the record more and more. There was definitely a change of style, but the magic was not yet lost and Sparks did in fact have a few real aces up their sleeves here. Still Exotic Creatures Of The Deep isn't even close to the two previous efforts but it does have some great moments like the first single Good Morning, This Is The Renaissance and the very appropriate song about Photoshop! Other compositions like I've Never Been High and (She Got Me) Pregnant are close to being great but lack the energy and passion that would have made them truly spectacular.

I'm still uncertain whether this album actually deserves more love from me, but it's this exact feeling of doubt that makes it a 3+ star recording in my album collection. Hopefully the next release will go back to the theatrics that made the previous releases as spectacular as they were!

***** star songs: Good Morning (3:53) This Is The Renaissance (3:45) Photoshop (4:01)

**** star songs: Intro (1:02) I Can´t Believe That You Would Fall For All The Crap In This Song (3:54) Intro Reprise (0:24) I've Never Been High (4:31) (She Got Me) Pregnant (4:13) The Director Never Yelled "Cut" (3:54) Likeable (6:13)

*** star songs: Strange Animal (5:45) Let The Monkey Drive (4:09) Lighten Up, Morrissey (4:14)

The band's marketing strategy for promoting the release of this album was pretty brilliant as far as these things go. Around the time the band formally released the album, the band played a three week series of concerts in which the band played its albums from start to finish (one album per night, in chronological order), with a B-side or rarity as the encore, commencing in the grand live unveiling of Exotic (which by this point had been out for about three weeks) on the 21st night. The Sparks Spectacular, as of 2014, is not available in any form other than scattered Youtube videos, and it's not clear that it will ever be released, but if they ever got around to cleaning these tracks up for release I'd absolutely buy it and listen to the whole thing (even the lesser albums).

As often happens with cases where the promotional campaign is particularly inspired, the actual product being promoted is a slight letdown, even if it's got a lot of good material and is quite good on the whole. The biggest change with this album from the previous ones is that the remaining Lil' Beethoven elements from Hello Young Lovers are virtually wiped away; there's a lot of repetition in the vocal parts, but this repetition is much more conventional than on LB or some of the parts of HYL, and the instrumentation, while still based primarily in Ron's keyboards, rarely attempts the faux- orchestral sounds of yore. For all of the various eccentricities of this album, this is definitely a very normal album in comparison to what they'd done lately; Russell spends most of his time doing actual singing of actual vocal melodies, while Ron uses a variety of keyboard sounds that mostly sound pretty great. This isn't a good thing or a bad thing in and of itself, but I do suspect that the slightly higher concentration than usual of clearly second-rate material has at least some correlation to the lack of a unifying gimmick for the album. Again, it's a really good album on the whole, but it's definitely a clear step down from LB and HYL.

The best demonstration of the issues this album often has is "Strange Animal," which has some decent ideas that feel more like they were superglued to each other than made into a coherent song, and it makes for a pretty problematic 5:45. There are also a couple of tracks tucked near the end that, if they don't outright suck, are knocking on the door pretty hard. "The Director Never Yelled Cut" prominently features one of the least pleasant loops of Ron keyboards this side of "Let's Get Funky," and the verse melody is so oddly mechanical that I'm not sure why they ultimately decided it was a good idea to include it on the album. "Photoshop" sounds like a potential classic for about 15 seconds, but the combination of a great piano part and a tense Russell delivery ends up largely being wasted on a song where the central hook is the dumb chorus of "Photoshop me out of your life." I get that Ron was trying to update his "odd takes on dealing with exes" for the late 2000s, but this really ends up sounding like a stale variation of better attempts at this kind of writing.

The rest of the album is really good, though, and the highs are high enough to mostly overcome the low points. The first half starts and ends with "Intro" and "Intro Reprise," respectively, and they're a delightful bit of Russell harmonizing with himself around the great phrase, "I don't care if you love me, just so you like me" and wordless "aaah" sounds. Immediately following "Intro" comes "Good Morning," an amusing up-tempo song with Russell falsetto-singing about waking up with a woman that's way out his league and not understanding how this is possible, while Ron lays down a fantastic keyboard pattern on (electric?) piano and synths. The lyrics are full of silly lines, such as "While I fix you breakfast/I hope it's just your laugh that is infectious" or "Hey, where you going? Does dasvedonya really mean good morning?" and the alternation between the main groove and the "Thank you God for something rare as this ..." parts is quite nice. I also really dig the false ending.

"I Can't Believe That You Would Fall For All the Crap in This Song" and "Let the Monkey Drive" each boast their own great keyboard grooves with great vocal parts on top, with the former boasting a slower, more intense one and the latter boasting a quicker, snappier one. "I Can't Believe ..." ends up using a bunch of different synth tones, and there's a surprising amount of complexity in the details of what seems like a pretty simple track on first listen. "Let the Monkey Drive" is a rare instance of breaking out an orchestral patch (tucking it into the background mostly, but it's there), but the main attraction of the song is definitely the groove in the parts where the monkey is driving the car, and you'd better believe that I find myself doing response vocals to Russell's parts if nobody else is around.

The second half does have the surprising low points mentioned earlier, but it also has a bunch of really delightful material. "I've Never Been High" is a majestic anthemic ballad from its first moments, but it also has a rather interesting part in the middle where the chorus fragments into Russell repeatedly singing "I've never ah ah/I've never ah ah" before returning to the main part of the song. Lyrically, it's more or less a successor to "When Do I Get to Sing My Way?" in that it reflects on experiences never had, and the fact that he's never been high is hardly a point of celebration. Then it's off to the land of silly misogyny with "She Got Me (Pregnant)," a pseudo-ethnic (in the same way as "Goofing Off") song that's either about (a) an alternate reality in which women impregnate men and the man feeling angry about being used, or (b) the woman manipulating the man into getting her pregnant ... and the man feeling angry about being used. And best of all there's "Lighten Up, Morrissey," a guitar-heavy rocker about a guy who has difficulties with women because he's not as awesome as Morrissey. "She won't hang out with me, no, she won't hang out/'Til my biting wit bites like his/She won't hang out with me, no she won't hang out/'Til my quick retort's quick as his" is typical fare for the song, and I like the fact that, in the chorus, some of the iterations of the title end in a question mark (as if he's afraid to offend Morrissey by making such a request).

"This is the Renaissance" kinda sounds like a HYL leftover, what with the combination of the bombastic drums and the guitar using a tone that was pretty commonplace on that album, and it's basically a chance for Ron to write silly lyrics about the benefits of the Renaissance in relation to the Middle Ages. Sample lyric: "Science is here/Nothing left to fear/Though the Earth is flat/It's not as flat as we feared/Music's gone wild/No Gregorian here/Contrapuntal music is the music that your parents fear." It's not really an album highlight, but it's definitely not a lowlight either. And finally, just when it seems that the album has taken a pretty steep dive after "Lighten Up, Morrissey," the album closer "Likeable" redeems things more than a bit. It really seems like Ron is writing out a sad desperate fantasy here, where he easily gets along with everybody around him and everybody wants to be his friend. The song is energetic but angry and mournful, with Russell frequently using rhythmic speaking in a HYL manner over the hyperactive keyboard and guitar parts, and except for the semi-cheerful carnival music in the "No-one ever wears a frown ..." parts, the song really gives the sense of somebody yelling "I'M LIKEABLE! I'M LIKEABLE!" into a mirror before going outside to deal with society. The return to the "I don't care if you like me, just so you love me ..." parts from the beginning of the album is a nice touch as well.

The album's a bit of a mixed bag on the whole, yes, but there's so much really good material that I feel like this grade is justified. Given that Ron was well over 60 at this point and Russell was nearly as old, this album has to be considered a significant success by any reasonable standard. If you liked the last two albums you'll probably like this one, but be aware that it doesn't really sound the same.