Despite being on album #10, Brett and Rennie Sparks are only now getting to grips with fame following ‘Fire From Any Road’ becoming the theme to TV show ‘True Detective’.
A beguiling mix of country whimsy and gothic fantasy, there’s little change between this release and their 1994 debut ‘Odessa’, but these old-world traditions will be of strange comfort to their most ardent fans.
The recording process – at night, with “only hawk moths listening” – seems to capture perfectly an other-worldly era, while ‘Back In My Day’ laments the loss of an age when “you could drink from the river”… “no locks on the door”… and of course, “music sounded better”.
Fortunately for the rest of us, the Sparks family have just lost their argument.
(This review originally appeared in the Forfar Dispatch)