Sparks, Terminal Jive

"Terminal Jive", Sparks' ninth full-length offering, sees the Bros. Mael in typical form: miles ahead of the pack. This time around, they're laying down mid-tempo new wave blueprints, the influence of which can be spotted in countless inferior club tracks from the 80's. Sparks were still working with Giorgio Moroder at this point, and his presence can be heard throughout, namely on the Italo disco album-closer "The Greatest Show On Earth", replete with high-hat punctuation and high-end synth twitches.

That being said, "Terminal Jive" is markedly subdued. Few traces of the operatic panic of "Propaganda" or "Kimono" can be found, nor is there any inkling of the drop-yer-drawers-and-party feel that subsequent albums like "Angst In My Pants" would bring. Instead, one gets the impression that for this album (and especially for lead-off track and single "When I'm With You"), Sparks clubbed the spirit of Studio 54 into submission and dumped it on a college dormitory shelf. Dance godammit, but at a medium pace, is what "Terminal Jive" seems to say. This approach works wonderfully well for some tracks, like the near-melancholic "Stereo", but others, like "Rock 'n' Roll People In A Disco World" (which isn't nearly as great as its title), simply sound like failed attempts at getting the Sparks magic of old out of second gear. The good outweighs the bad, though, and "Terminal Jive" will delight anyone interested in seeing the majority of 80s popsters beaten by Ron and Russell Mael, who as usual had won the race before anyone else found their way to the starting block.

More reviews