Sparks - Live On The Moon

So May We Start; Do Things My Own Way; Reinforcements; Academy Award Performance; Goofing Off; Beat The Clock; Please Don’t; Running Up A Tab At The Hotel For The Fab; Surburban Homeboy; All You Ever Think About Is Sex; Drowned In A Sea Of Tears; Jansport Backpack; Music That You Can Dance To; When Do I Get To Sing “ My Way”: The Number One Song In Heaven; This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us; Whippings And Apologies; Lord Have Mercy; The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte; All That

(Transgressive Records)

There are few bands in popular music capable of making a live album feel like an event before the first note has even been played. Sparks, naturally, has found a way. Live on the Moon arrives wrapped in a typically absurd piece of Sparks mythology: a concert supposedly staged at Taruntius Crater, with Cate Blanchett serving as lunar emcee. It is, of course, entirely fictional. But that barely matters. With Sparks, reality has always been more of a suggestion than a rule.

What matters is that this is the Mael brothers' first full concert album, and it proves an inspired way to document a band whose live reputation has become every bit as extraordinary as its recorded legacy. Spanning 20 tracks and more than five decades of musical eccentricity, Live on the Moon doesn't feel like a museum piece. It feels gloriously alive.

Opening with So May We Start, the theatrical command from Annette, Sparks immediately establish the album's grand sense of occasion. Russell Mael remains a remarkable frontman, his extraordinary voice still capable of switching from arch sophistication to full-throttle theatricality without breaking a sweat. Behind him, Ron Mael's piano remains the wonderfully peculiar engine room of the entire operation.

The setlist is where Live on the Moon really earns its keep. There is no attempt to simply march through the greatest hits. Instead, Sparks jump recklessly across their catalogue, moving from recent material such as Do Things My Own Way, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte and All That to classics including Beat the Clock, The Number One Song in Heavenand This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us.

There is also something wonderfully defiant about the whole project. Most artists approaching a career nearing six decades tend to become reverential about their own history. They don't merely celebrate the past; they rearrange it, poke fun at it and throw it back into the future.

This is the sound of a band that are still pushing the boundaries, whilst their peers from the Glam Rock period have mainly faded into obscurity. Sparks remain gloriously relevant.