TimeOut New York review

TimeOut New York Sparks Hello Young Lovers (In the Red) Having assimilated disco (No. 1 in Heaven), new wave (Angst in My Pants) and U.K. dance culture (Plagiarism) over the past three decades, Sparks’ Ron and Russell Mael have now seen fit to revisit their roots as absurdist prog-rockers—on a grand scale. Like 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven,Hello Young Lovers is dominated by lush 18th-century-style string arrangements that make Queen sound like a jug band. (“As I Sit to Play the Organ at the Notre Dame Cathedral” even nods to “Bohemian Rhapsody” with a “hallelujah” chorus.) The Maels’ love of repetition works well on the scent-maddened “Perfume” and the seditious “(Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country,” which backs a chanted version of our national anthem with hypnotically static horns and delayed acoustics. Among the more fully developed tracks, the six-minute opener “Dick Around” interrupts operatic bombast with the metallic variety (courtesy of members of Faith No More and Redd Kross), in the service of an elaborate tale of go-getters turned couch potatoes. “Waterproof” twists every rain-like-tears metaphor known to pop, and invents some of its own (“The skies are crying / But I’m not buying / Your Meryl Streep mimicry”). At its best, Sparks’ 20th album is outlandish, unsentimental and a mustache hair too forceful to be taken solely as a joke.—Franklin Bruno