The Times, KNowledge – album review

The Times February 04, 2006 Rock/pop Sparks Hello Young Lovers (GUT) Last time round, on Lil’ Beethoven, Ron and Russell Mael constructed a largely drum-free Sparks, while building up banks of vocal, keyboard and orchestral overdubs into a form of tumultuous Teutonic glam- rock chamber-pop opera. Probably conscious that no one dare match them, Hello Young Lovers revisits the same plan, but it’s a leaner, meatier sequel. It’s still take-no-prisoners stuff, but what helps the medicine go down is the surfeit of shrill melodic hooks (the boys love their showtunes) that Sparks have always mastered — that and Russell’s daft humour, beginning with the admission “all I do now is dick around” (Dick Around) and proceeding through such diatribes as There’s No Such Thing As Aliens and As I Sit to Play the Organ at Notre Dame Cathedral. MARTIN ASTON