Sparks

If I were to name a single good personal reason to love America, this would be Sparks. I mean, the two brothers from California, Ron and Russell Mael. It's hard to write about such strange musicians, who started in the '70s as glam-rockers, evolved as pioneers of new wave and synth-pop, experimented with disco and electronic dance and define themselves as a pop act, though their sophisticated and cerebral lyrics and complex sound are the farthest possible from what pop music usually accepts.

Like many people in continental Europe, I found out about them only because of their great album "Gratuitous Sax and Senseless Violins", from 1994, and rediscovered them thanks to "Lil Beethoven" (2002) and "Hello Young Lovers' (2006). The new Sparks were different and even better and much more refined after all these years. I like to see here the symbolic world of American pop culture facing the European one (the Maels themselves have always loved Europe) and the old world of American pop culture facing the new, darker America, with all the nostalgy, melancholy, detachment, grace, irony and mockery that these songs can incorporate.

And now they have a new album, "Exotic Creatures of the Deep" - again an album for repeated listenings, with many layers of sound and meaning. These definitely ageless people had the unusual idea of promoting this album by a series of 21 consecutive concerts in London - a gig for each of their 21 albums, ending on June 13 with the latest one. I hope that my capricious Internet connection will help me to watch at least a part of the live streaming of their latest three concerts here.

This "Good Morning" is the first single of "Exotic Creatures" (lyrics of the album are here, covers here and here). A review says that it's a cynical song about an old man who remembers a one night stand, another says that it's a hilarious song about a drunkard who can't remember what he did last night. But I guess that, like the other songs on the album, this one is about cultural cliches and their mechanics that "monkey" the reality. If you mock them too harshly, you'll end up by mocking and devaluing the very reality (love, loneliness, pleasure, art, beauty, humanity), as long as cliches are structuring the reality up to the point that without them it may seem unbearable or worthless. The forbidden, loved and idealized fruit may be only a banana in the hand of a monkey, but well, we all come from monkeys and end up by behaving accordingly, whatever this may mean.