There seems to be no stop­ping Sparks who have just added to their pro­lif­ic out­put with a new EP called MADDER!, a exten­sion of the recent MAD! album.

The Mael broth­ers have described the birth of this new work: “Not want­i­ng the Mad!ness to end and buoyed by the phe­nom­e­nal reac­tion to MAD!, we made a hasty but intense retreat to the stu­dio to record a Sparks first: an EP. MADDER!, a four-song com­pan­ion piece to the album, is for every­one who isn’t yet MAD! enough. We hope these new songs will take you to an even MADDER! place.” 

The first track is Por­cu­pine, a very typ­i­cal Sparks com­po­si­tion with the synth bub­bling away and equal­ly well-defined har­monies. The lyrics are all about a man’s fas­ci­na­tion with a woman with a prick­ly per­son­al­i­ty and there’s a catchy cho­rus that is dif­fi­cult to refrain from singing along with.

Accom­pa­ny­ing the Mael broth­ers on the bril­liant­ly humor­ous video for Por­cu­pine is Self Esteem, play­ing the prick­ly woman… and when the steam­roller enters, you can guess where this is all going to end up.

The oth­er tracks are Fan­ta­size, Mess Up and They, with the new mate­r­i­al in the same spir­it of the MAD! album. The third track Mess Up is par­tic­u­lar­ly clever, a dra­mat­ic song that leans heav­i­ly on Sparks’ tal­ent for musi­cal the­atre com­bined with deli­cious har­monies. Lyri­cal­ly it presents a series of grim life sce­nar­ios, includ­ing the ‘heavy right fist’ on the album cov­er. It’s a track that seethes with tension.

The EP clos­es with the moody, slow-tem­po track They, a rich­ly orches­trat­ed piece that starts with a gen­tly strummed gui­tar. The Mael broth­ers leave to one side the boun­cy and bub­bling com­po­si­tions that per­me­ate much of their work and delve into some­thing thought­ful and mea­sured, to supreme effect. The lyrics lament audi­ences who nev­er quite get their fill and are just not sat­is­fied. It’s a track about dis­ap­point­ment all round and behind that, despair. 

Will Sparks play this live? The idea of any­one leav­ing a Sparks per­for­mance feel­ing short-changed feels almost impos­si­ble, mak­ing this a some­what amus­ing con­clu­sion to Mad­der! How­ev­er as a metaphor for mis­ery and dis­ap­point­ment in life, this song nails it .

Sparks Offi­cial web­site
Stream/buy MAD! here