#476: Sparks, ‘Kimono My House’

Island, 1974

This is a fun album. Sparks is a brother duo, Ron and Russell Mael from LA but who really identified with London and lived there for most of their fame.

They are the kind of band that makes me feel cool when I listen to them.

You don’t need to develop a personality when you listen to music as creative as this. This album is your personality.

That’s a lie that teen Nicolle would have eaten up. I just didn’t know about this band so I didn’t get to be part of the cult.

29-year-old Nicolle might go there because, at this stage, having a personality is exhausting and this band could just take care of that for me.

But could it?

Nay, should it?

I guarantee I could make at least two friends at the next thrift store I go to by talking about this band.

But isn’t that what is confusing about identities and personalities and all those things that seem so dependent on what we consume -- music, clothes, religions, tv shows and politics. So many of us are just combos of media and junk. To pretend we are not is infantile.

I think that the light that pierces through my very dark consumer-attitude framework is that a lot of people fit some mold, let’s call it the Sparks mold, but then they go and do something completely unexpected. This is when they break that product-perfect personna and it is refreshingly simple and refreshingly human and often boring.

This is all to say that this is a good album and my big takeaway is that I don’t know if I have a personality anymore. I might not be a person anymore. I’ve watched too much tv.

Yikes. But it’s spooky season and that is okay. Be spooked.

Top songs: Amateur Hour, Here In Heaven, Thank God It’s Not Christmas, Barbacutie

PS. I just want someone to call me a “barbacutie” before it gets too cold outside.