Sparks was the other eras-based time-hop bop in KC over the weekend

Sparks at Midland. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

While the metro was focused on Taylor Swift’s back-to-back sold out shows at Arrowhead this weekend, a different iconoclastic act bounced through KC. Sparks, the eccentric electronic/alternative duo headed by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, have been releasing music since 1966 and made their second-ever stop in the KC area. Or the first that they can remember.

To explain the appeal of dance-rock’s eternal oddball superstars requires a backstory of thousands of words, or perhaps an entire film. [If you’re up to it, that film now exists courtesy of a documentary by Edgar Wright.] This week, Patton Oswalt was kind enough to sum up why Sparks is responsible for one of the most inviting fandoms in rock.

Ron and Russell, along with their backing band, headlined the Midland Theatre on Saturday night, July 8, 2023. Touring in support of their latest album The Girl Is Crying In Her Latte—their 25th full length studio release—the brothers started promptly at 8 p.m. and were fully cleared out of the space by 10 p.m. with no opening acts and no filler. The early shutdown of a bar close at 9:30 p.m. on a weekend seemed perplexing to some of the Midland bar staff, but the show was total perfection from opening note to final selfie bow.

Sporting a setlist spanning tracks from across almost six decades of a career, it was borderline spiritual to catch the Mael men at what feels like somehow the height of their prowess. Russell still attacks each song with the combined enthusiasm of a hype man with the powerful lyrical delivery of a comedian, hitting the most acerbic lines of each track with poise or venom, depending on the spirit.

Sparks at Midland. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

Their latest single “Nothing Is As Good As They Say It Is” is written from the perspective of a 22 hour year-0ld child who has decided it does not want to continue living because this whole existence thing doesn’t seem that great. This level of caustic earworm comedy would belong perfectly as originating at any point in the last 50 years of their songwriting, marking an early set reminder of why no one comes to Sparks with a dream set list in mind. All Sparks is as good as all other Sparks—the rare legacy musicians that can tour receiving as much enthusiastic crowdlove for the announcement of “yet another new song” as any selection from their multiple greatest hit collections

With the aforementioned openness towards always inviting new fans into the Sparks club, it somehow did not come as a surprise to us when the teenager seated behind our crew was a combination Sparks/Taylor Swift fan, who brought an equal excitement to both—and the same language of appreciation. She’d made friendship bracelets dedicated to each album from Sparks’ massive discography and was giving them out to strangers.

She was our hero, the protector of the future, and we would all die to protect her. God bless her mother, with whom she’d been traveling the midwest, for putting up with a whiplash of some of the most passionate music fans imaginable.

Sparks at Midland. // Photo by Brock Wilbur

The evening’s theatrical delivery from the opening of “So May We Start” through “Gee That Was Fun” was a reminder that a full night of Sparks is never enough. May we hopefully see “Number One Song In Heaven” again sooner rather than later.

Set List: