4.5/5 Sparks go away for 6 years and come back with a revelation. A wonderfully bizarre bent-pop record with songs riffing on Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, Gone with the Wind, Liberace, and Chinese filmmaker Tsui Hark. You know, 90's stuff.
From its Confidential magazine cover and blaring sensationalism, its an album out of time, a frantic thrashing against celebrity, peaking with the flayed I Thought I Told You to Wait in the Car. From ruminations on the ennui of owning the BBC, to trancy micro-experiments - it's a complete 180 from their pop-grasping lows.
But the signature song is The Ghost of Liberace, a pop fairy tale of what remains of fame, reflected in the story of a man once scourged by Confidential itself. It's hard not to see it as autobiographical. Elegiac and hopeful that one will be remembered fondly, it's Sparks accepting that it's better to burn out bright on your own terms. If this had been their last album, it would have been strangely perfect, but the story's got a couple twists yet
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