LA legends Sparks thrill Hollywood Bowl with a ‘beyond our dreams’ debut

There’s a scene early in “The Sparks Brothers,” director Edgar Wright’s documentary on the brothers Ron and Russell Mael, where Russell reflects on a moment in the early ’70s when Sparks seemed poised for sudden success.

“It just seemed like we were soon gonna be at the Hollywood Bowl ourselves,” he says of a dream the brothers shared since 1964 when their mother drove them to the Bowl to see the Beatles.

It’s a poignant moment in that excellent 2021 film because Sparks did not shoot straight to the top as the Maels might have dreamed, their quirky sensibilities always landing them a few steps out of the mainstream.

On Sunday, that long-awaited dream became reality as Sparks headlined the Hollywood Bowl, the largest venue they’ve ever played, in an emotional, triumphant homecoming.

The show opened with “So We May Start,” a song from “Annette,” the 2021 musical film for which the Maels were co-creators of the story and music. The title track of “The Girl is Crying in Her Latte,” which arrived in May, followed, and over the 90 minutes the show ran, the unique, imaginative musical world of the brothers blossomed on stage.

Russell Mael, 74, and Ron Mael, 77, remain as perfectly composed as ever. Russell’s vocals soared operatically as he danced and skipped hyperactively around the stage, dressed on Sunday in a red-and-black suit with matching shoes. Ron’s deadpan squint almost never broke as he played intricate melodies while seated at his keyboard, dressed more like a stoic British banker than a rock star.

It’s what you expect at a Sparks show and with 18 songs in 90 minutes the band played songs from nearly every period and style of its career, playing songs from exactly half of its 26 studio albums, from “Beaver O’Lindy” from “A Woofer in Tweeter’s Clothing,” the group’s 1973 sophomore release, to five tracks from the excellent new album.

Sparks’ lyrics range from funny to serious, romantic to morose, and sometimes all of that in the same song. Sometimes the joke is in the title – “Angst In My Pants,” for instance.

Other times it’s in Ron Mael’s lyrical point of view. The new “Nothing Is as Good as They Say It Is,” Russell Mael explained, is “from the perspective of a 22-hour-old child, a boy, and he feels that after 22 hours he’s seen enough and he wants to go back to where he came from.”

Midway through the show, “Shopping Mall of Love” brought Ron Mael out from behind the keyboard for the first time, reciting the lyrics in an expressionless monotone that made the absurd love song even funnier.

The second half of the set delivered some of Sparks’ best-loved songs, including “Music That You Can Dance To,” an ode and a sendup of dance-pop, and “When Do I Get to Sing ‘My Way,’” a song that’s both wistful and joyous. (Both of those were Top 10 dance pop songs in the United States, and even bigger in Europe.)

“The Number One Song in Heaven,” Sparks’ 1979 Giorgio Moroder-produced take on disco, kept the dance party slipped into “This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us,”

“This Town Ain’t Big Enough For the Both of Us,” a single off 1974’s “Kimono My House,” seemed to get the biggest response of the night, as it should. For many fans, this was the first Sparks that broke through the roadblocks of radio and record promotion to reach their ears at the time (and Siouxsie and the Banshees covered it on the album, “Through the Looking Glass,” adding to its renown).

After “My Baby’s Taking Me Home” opened the encore the night wrapped up with “All That,” a song Russell Mael introduced as one that “encapsulates how we feel emotionally about an evening like tonight.  It’s so amazing, the bond that we have with all you guys, It’s something extra special.”

You get what he means in its lyrics of sticking by each other through times good and bad: “All that we’ve done / We’ve lost, we’ve won / All that, all that and more,” he sang. “All that we’ve seen / We’ve heard, we’ve dreamed / All that, all that and more.”

The music over, Ron and Russell Mael seemed reluctant to leave the stage, lingering to wave to the cheering crowd even after Edgar Wright popped out to take a photograph of Sparks with the fans in the Bowl behind them.

“We really wanted to thank you so much,” Ron Mael said when his brother unexpectedly handed him the microphone to say something. “We’re from Los Angeles, and we started out here, playing in front of six waitresses at the Whisky A Go Go, and we thought we were just on top of the world at that point.

“So to come back at this stage and have this kind of reception at this venue, it’s just beyond our dreams.”

They Might Be Giants opened the show Sunday with a 50-minute set of their own brand of offbeat songwriting. The group founded by singer-songwriters John Linnell and John Flansburgh in 1982 played a dozen songs including such favorites as “Birdhouse In Your Soul,” “Particle Man,” and “Anna Ng,” and captured the kind of happy attention that openers often do not.

“Istanbul (Not Constantinople),” “Doctor Worm,” and set-closing “Don’t Let’s Start,” the latter, Flansburgh noted, probably the first TMBG song anyone there ever heard.

As with Sparks, this seemed to be the first time They Might Be Giants have played the Hollywood Bowl.

“It’s so exciting to be here tonight,” Flansburgh told the crowd at one point. “Up until now, this has just been an exit for us.”