a consistent display of fully realised performance art, and inspiring with it ★★★★ The Times Sparks & the Heritage Orchestra, Barbican, London, Dec 2014 It’s commonplace for bands to perform their classic albums in full, but Sparks’s concert for Kimono my House was always going to be different. Anglophile brothers from California, Ron and Russell Mael were men out of time when Kimono my House came out in 1974: Ron, the musical mastermind, looked like a Weimar-era piano teacher with a Hitler moustache and Russell looked like an elfin man-boy. Forty years on they remain much unchanged. The original album was the work of a rock band, but for this concert the brothers hired the services of the Heritage Orchestra to bring the album alive. Out went electric guitars and in came brass, harp and woodwind, but the Maels’ eccentric vision was intact. Coming to the stage in kimonos, the brothers began with their biggest hit: This Town ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us. It was the song that introduced the world to Russell’s hysterical falsetto and Ron’s distinct sensibility, a mix of musical theatre, British Invasion-era pop and camp humour. Ron was impassive behind his grand piano while Russell, a sprightly 66-year-old, hopped about and ensured that his falsetto reached the high notes on such Noël Coward-esque gems as Falling in Love With Myself Again and Thank God it’s not Christmas. There was a generous, celebratory mood to the whole affair: the brothers gave it their all, the orchestra was tightly rehearsed and the audience got behind it. Russell inaugurated a singalong for Equator, the final song onKimono my House. “Tempo, pitch,” he admonished, when the audience failed to meet Equator’s demands. The second half of the concert covered other sections of Sparks’s career: excerpts from their 2009 musical The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman, Rhythm Thieffrom their career-reviving 2002 album Lil’ Beethoven, and 1979’s uplifting disco classic Number One Song in Heaven, for which 69-year-old Ron Mael, scowling throughout, stepped away from the piano to loosen his tie and do a one-minute charleston before returning to his sedentary position. The concert was a consistent display of fully realised performance art, and inspiring with it.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 12:31:29 +0000
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