Plagiarism.

I finally decided to buy Hello Young Lovers, expensive import price and all, and damn if that wasn't the best carefully considered, drawn out purchasing decision of my life! The album is frickin' brilliant!

To go into a little more detail: Hello Young Lovers suffers from no flaws. There's plenty to listen to, and I'd suggest (to myself in the past, considering I'm, like, the only person in Australia liable to buy this album) when you first get the album, not starting it when you have something to do in the next hour. Otherwise you might just find it, as I did, hard to not go on and listen to the whole thing (I was totally going to read more Philosophical Investigations today!)

The songs sound the same as absolutely nothing Sparks have ever done before, with a few possible exceptions (Ugly Guys With Beautiful Girls springs to mind). However, once you get a few listens under your (metaphorical) belt, then, if you are familiar with their material, you might see it as a progression from their classically tinged Lil' Beethoven album, with the addition of some heavy rock instrumentalism, similar (especially in the first track, Dick Around,) to that heard in their collaboration with Faith No More. Yet another thing: don't expect another Kimono My House, because that's one thing that this album most certainly is not. I'm not sure that I can come to a conclusion yet about whether it's actually better than that classic, but... that would be a pretty odd comparison to try and make as they are musically and temporally miles apart (temporal miles.)

Hello Young Lovers is the first album since Aerial to make me write a blog post. Hell, it's the first once since Aerial that I've bought. This fact in itself is a little worrying, because it means I'm probably unconventionally acquiring too much music, but I digress. Hello Young Lovers is awesome in its intricacy and its power. Russell's vocals really shine throughout, and the title of (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country is nothing short of hilarious. Put it this way; I listened to this album about an hour ago. You should've done the same.


And apologies to Mirza.