Here’s something you may not realize about Sparks. It’s just a little thing that occurred to me. Namely, Russell Mael has rather a sexy voice when he’s not hitting his highest falsetto notes. You probably listen to Propaganda and Kimono My House a lot, and on those records Russ sounds just like a girl. But I went through a phase of listening to Pulling Rabbits Out of a Hat a lot, and I noticed that Russell sounds quite dreamy when he’s in the lower ranges of his vocal capacity. Not to mention that I’ve always thought he was cute, so yeah. For that reason, and others, Pulling Rabbits is probably the least silly and most sexy of Sparks albums. The real reason for that, the record’s raison d’être, is the usual Sparks business of producing incredibly spot-on parody of popular musical styles. In this case, New Wave. It’s the first and best Fake New Wave record ever, and a better one than many real New Wave records. The nefarious-mustached Ron Mael easily fabricates the sound; lots of catchy synths, dramatic melodies and just a touch of rock bite. Meanwhile, Russell does the hyper-stylized vocal mannerisms that define New Wave, and he does them so well you almost can’t tell it’s a parody. Until you hear the lyrics, that is. The lyrics are, as usual, completely ridiculous. This one is actually uncharacteristically unsilly. It spoofs the cliches of romanticized ‘let’s fuck’ songs, but only slightly. If you weren’t familiar with Sparks and didn’t know that their mission in life is to make fun of everything around them, you’d think this was a real New Wave song, by the likes of someone like Simple Minds or Modern English, maybe even a long-lost Depeche Mode B-Side or something. So convincing that had they wanted to, Sparks could have surfed the ‘Wave to mainstream popularity. All they needed was louder suits and more flamboyant hair. And dumber lyrics.