Album Reviews
Movie Reviews
Concert Reviews

Top 10
Resources
Time Wasters
Contact Us

It's not often that a band completely grabs your attention and has you eagerly anticipating each song. 

Well, Sparkwood is a band that has achieved that with their latest album _Jalopy Pop!!!_. 

The Austin, Texas-based indie power pop band, which is the creation of vocalist-keyboardist Bart Padar, has managed to incorporate the best elements of pop from the past 40 years -- muscular melodies, lush harmonies, classy arrangements and an appreciation for the pop masters -- Lennon and McCartney, Mercury and May, Jeff Lynne, and all those guys who wrote songs for The Monkees. 

But don't think this is a walk down memory lane. Sparkwood is very now. Modern sounds are woven throughout, amidst the vintage-sounding instruments. 

About a decade ago there was a band called the Greenberry Woods that captured this sound in a very similar way. And like Greenberry Woods and other power pop acts the lyrics are usually romantic in nature 

On the insanely catchy "In Your Lovin' Arms," Padar sounds like Weezer's Rivers Cuomo -- if Cuomo was being completely sincere. 

Sparkwood slows it down just a bit on "Nichole's Overture," a beautiful song with soaring harmonies and a nice use of mellotron. 

Padar takes the listener on a journey with the subtle and dreamy psychedelic pop of "Glimpse of Hope," a song that ends with some synth bleeps and bloops that sound as though a flying saucer is about to land. Trippy! 

But brace yourselves, friends. The magnum opus on Jalopy Pop!!! is the final track, "3 Words," which clocks in at more than fourteen minutes. Then it goes into some bizarre White Album territory a la "Revolution No. 9." You get an aural mish-mash of samples ranging from the Zombies, Madness, Angelo Badalamenti, bossa nova, Stephen Hawking-like voices, clickety-clacking train tracks and then it resumes with some They Might Be Giants-styled quirk-pop. Listening to it reminds yourself -- "Oh yeah, this guy does live in Austin. No wonder." 

Padar and the band have a gift -- a gift for creating pop the way it was meant to be heard. Too bad there aren't more folks like Padar out there. 

Andrew West Griffin  May 21, 2005