Evening Standard review

[b]Evening Standard review[/b] By David Smyth “Today I bought the album of the year. I feel I can say this without expecting several letters saying I’m talking rubbish,” wrote 15-year-old music obsessive Steve Morrissey to the NME on 15 June 1974. The album was Kimono My House, the British breakthrough of arty LA brothers Ron and Russell Mael, who called themselves Sparks. To prove that he was not a teenager of flighty affections but one with the courage of his convictions, Morrissey persuaded the pair to perform it, track by track, almost exactly 30 years later, at his Meltdown festival this weekend. The brothers have admitted they had “mixed feelings” about re-creating an old favourite, as they seem more proud of their current work, 2002’s Lil’ Beethoven. To please both Meltdown’s curator and themselves, they ended up playing both albums in full. “Compare and contrast,” suggested Russell. Kimono My House certainly sounded more conventional, but in Sparks’s case that means hysterical operatic vocals, bizarre time signatures and darkly surreal lyrics about Albert Einstein, cannibals and girls with “foul tongues”. The brothers performed it with a full rock band that included former members of Faith No More, Rollins Band and Redd Kross, giving the barrage of catchy tunes a satisfying rock crunch. The opening song, This Town Ain’t Big Enough For Both Of Us, stood out as the classic single, but strong album tracks such as Thank God It’s Not Christmas and the dramatic Equator proved that it was no fluke. Almost everything sounded like it could have been a hit. Nobody left the venue after the first half, suggesting that, remarkably, Sparks have not lost a significant chunk of their audience after 19 albums. Lil’ Beethoven is a weirder proposition, almost entirely abandoning drums, guitars and dense lyrics in favour of synthesized strings and single lines repeated many times. It is also funnier, a characteristic the duo played up to on stage with hunched, moustachioed Ron acting out the themes of the songs. He played piano with absurdly elongated arms, enthusiastically mimed riding a horse, and chased a disappearing picture of a bride around the screens. It was a fun, inimitable performance that justified Morrissey’s long-term love.