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May 23, 2025Delivers what most Sparks fans want from them most – a barrage of the kind of eccentric yet immediately connective synth-pop bangers, which only Chaplin-moustached keyboard maestro Ron Mael, now 79, seems capable of writing, and which Russell, 76, his sky-scraping high notes miraculously uneroded by passing time, delivers with characteristic theatrical gusto.
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May 22, 2025MAD! is ‘just another’ adroit, bold, clever, distinctive, epigrammatic, fascinating, groundbreaking, highbrow, inventive, jocund, kaleidoscopic, lowbrow, maverick, nonconformist, observational, piquant, quizzical, ravishing, smart, tough, unconventional, versatile, witty, xenodochial, youthful, zeitgeisty Sparks album. [Jun 25, p.102]
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UncutSep 8, 2025It's all inimitably Sparks. [Jul 2025, p.37]
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The WireJul 3, 2025A typically lightfooted zip through the ironies and anxieties of the modern world. If “Do Things My Own Way”, “JanSport Backpack” and “Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab” don’t become setlist staples, then I’ll eat my hat (and yours). [Aug 2025, p.59]
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May 28, 2025The angular flexes in style and wordplay tied together with Russell’s high wire deployment prove as duly consistent a formula as any of the standout entries in the duo’s crowded discography.
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May 22, 2025Pop classicists with a heart of gold, Sparks are busy out-pacing the copyists, and reminding us all exactly why they remain so beloved.
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MojoMay 22, 2025As ever it's the small details they alight upon which resonate. [Jul 2025, p.79]
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May 22, 2025By the time the closing track, the swaying, communal singalong of Lord Have Mercy, comes around, you’ll be mentally reordering your list of top 10 all-time Sparks albums. MAD! is the sound of the Mael Brothers defying age and still doing things their own way.
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May 23, 2025Some of the monotonous lyrical structures and instrumental loops on MAD! might make it fall short of other projects from the brothers, but Ron and Russel are experts at genre-switching, even if there is some fall-through. That said, there’s no band that has so consistently evolved in music like the brothers, and this is certainly another feather in the cap for Sparks.
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Classic Rock MagazineJun 20, 2025As ever with the Maels, the relentless high-camp levity and heavily mannered, shrill, staccato delivery can sometimes jar on MAD! [Summer 2025, p.72]
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May 23, 2025It may not be as consistent as some of their other albums, but there's still quite a bit of Sparks' witty tale-spinning for fans to enjoy.
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May 22, 2025The duo could have sat on their laurels following the release of the warts-and-all documentary The Sparks Brothers and produced a rock-heavy work that would appeal to the fans. Still, to their credit, the Mael brothers have gone a different direction and issued something more cerebral.