Even if you didn't know these two were brothers, you could probably figure it out by listening to their records. Hello Young Lovers is their 20th full-length in 35 years, the second in a phase we might call "comeback"; they're favorites of the cognoscenti, back for another round. And yet good god does it still sound so teenaged: They're in their fifties, but they come at their music like two guys with a long, firm grounding in sharing the same bedrooms, watching the same cartoons, and fighting over the same last pork chops. You just know that if they'd gone off young to work with other people, they'd have had all their best qualities stripped off of them; you just know what "other people" are like. "No, this band will not play a song about pineapples or a sing about tits. No, this band will not let you sing like a variety show Freddie Mercury, even if you got there first. No, this band will definitely not let you look like Mr. Rogers with a Hitler mustache."
Together, though-- for years and years-- they get to cooperate in the execution of what's inevitably a suburban-adolescent comic-book fantasy: turning themselves into plasticized Mickey Mouse maestros, the class clowns and mischief-makers at the music conservatory. The title of their last album: Little Beethoven, undoubtedly a scamp. That adolescence runs right into the lyrics on this one, matching up with the older-guy prerogative to not take things so damned seriously. Young lovers do post-breakup aimlessness: "The sun comes up, the sun goes down/ And all I do is dick around." (Then the song breaks out into fake-metal Slayer.) More experienced lovers prefer to woman who wears no perfume, because: "The olfactory sense is the sense that most strongly evokes memories of the past/ Well, screw the past." And older, wiser lovers have good advice for the young ones, including the best thing I've heard in song this year: "Chicks chicks dig dig D-I-G dig dig METAPHORS." ("Use them wisely, use them well/ And you will never know the hell/ Of loneliness.")
There's that same Mickey Mouse teendom in the music, too, which folds tricks from across a long career into one package-- including contributions from some longtime Sparks collaborators. It's largely drumless and "orchestral," which is to say that it pops along on staccato strings and runs through lots of flouncing arrangements; the sound has the airtight feel of a software symphony. Other songs dance along on keyboards, sequencers, and fussy guitars, making little minuets, romping happily around the notions of corniness and camp. Real-world product testing reveals that it's a little bothersome on headphones in the subway (just makes you tense) and terrific on speakers during at-home downtime (perfect for laundry-folding). Something teenaged about that, too-- the way they're better when you're bored.
The one teenaged thing they're missing, unfortunately, is an adolescent attention span, the kind that flogs an idea for two minutes and then moves on to something else. These songs go on too long, even to the point of faking fade-outs and then bursting back for another coda. They drag and repeat themselves and wander and occasionally come off a little all the same. They're adorable-- just probably not as strong as anyone on this side of the speakers would like. Mickey Mouse maestros have a bit of the mickeymouse this time-- but the trick's still a good one, and bless them for keeping it going.
