No.1 In Heaven - EP

maybe you're closer to here than you imagine...

     

This is a triumphant piece of work - I would dare to call it flawless, but Sparks is a band that prefers to make some kind of intentional mistake just to set themselves apart. The joke's always on them, but it's on you too - people like them because they're funny, but then they have the last laugh when you're nearly in tears because what you hear is so beautiful.

And that is the true greatness of this very short but entirely complete album. It's an absolutely spirited and gorgeous piece of electronic disco, which even without any lyrics would stand on its own as one of Giorgio Moroder's best efforts. Adding the Mael brothers' unconventional and unpredictable brand image to that of Moroder's was almost risky - but the gamble paid off. Like so many things in the late 70's, it didn't make sense on paper but it sure felt right. By being unafraid to combine two seemingly disparate musical spheres and succeeding, they raised their overall importance as artists.

And they didn't even do it at the expense of their ironic tongue-in-cheek lyrics or outsider status - they proved to the world that they weren't just a funny glam rock novelty, unable to move forward without compromising their quality or integrity.

I could have spent more time talking about the actual sounds the songs contain, but I always found descriptions of the afterworld to be trite. It's up for you to decide whether it's heavenly or not, but I for one still feel the goosebumps when the title track hits exactly three and a half minutes - it takes what was already a beautiful song and does what anyone would do in 1979 - increase the beat to as fast as humanly possible.