SPARKS

The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte (Island)

Stepping onto the publicity treadmill as is obligatory, Sparks siblings Ron and Russell Mael speak enthusiastically about how The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte – their 26th album – marks a return to Island Records, who helped make them outré chart artists nearly 50 years ago. You might think this a fairly mundane detail, but it serves to underscore how astonishingly state-of-the-art these pensionable gentlemen’s musical moves remain, and how they could get a pass for pallidly reprising Kimono My House et al but instead strive to reinvent.

So after the opening title track, for which the Maels roped in Cate Blanchett to star in the video, Veronica Lake expounds over pitter-pat minimal techno – they know what they’re doing with this stuff too. Synth-led songs of a less dance-centric ilk follow, like the graceful Not That Well-Defined, and if Sparks’ theatrical glam-rock struts are what you seek, there’s plenty of those too. A genuinely outstanding album, with zero laurels rested.

words NOEL GARDNER