Through The Sparks have set a March 18 release for their new album Transindifference, their most ambitious and fully realized work to date— and Crave is proud to premiere the single “Execution” in the run-up to the full-length offering.
An evolved and eclectic mix of spacey ‘70s glam and throwback New Wave within a wash of synth-anchored psychedelia, the veteran Alabama rockers have shown expansive growth across two full-length albums, two EPs and three compilations in their decade of existence. A unique hybridization of psych-rock, prog and indie influences, Transindifference marks a meaningful shift for Through the Sparks, especially for frontman Jody Nelson.
“I wanted to be less dark about things. I wanted to put some positivity in there,” he explains. “After I stepped back from the album, I realized that the scope had widened. The pendulum had swung the other way.”
Aggressive and urgent, the pulsing glam-kraut of album opener and lead single “Execution” succeeds in this ambition while calling back to Bowie, Kraftwerk & Ric Ocasek. “It’s about what happens when you use logistics to take the meaning out of everything,” Nelson tells Crave. “But, like the rest of the album, it’s a celebration of what’s left after that—the befuddlement and wonderment of the human who took it all apart—love and lust and everything human and animal you had before you started dabbling in the quest for omniscience, or took some teetering stab at trying to balance things.”
We’ll be hearing quite a number of David Bowie tributes and inspired-bys in the coming months following the icon’s recent passing, but the avant garde hero had woven his influence into the Through The Sparks sound long ago.
“Bowie made it okay to be conspicuously inauthentic and more outward-facing with songwriting and recording,” Nelson continues. “Theatrics, absurdity, caricature. Artistic supernatural abilities aside, though, he also knew how to just rock in the purest form of the word. He put in his time with all the Little Richard records and was expanding those sentiments. Real rock & roll has in its genetics the fatalism of the times and people who created it.”
He goes on: “Live fast, love hard, die young” was built into its DNA. But when Bowie pushed through the edges of it, he did so with intent to remain intact and self-aware. And that stuff, early rock music, is always in there, peaking out, no matter how progressive the music may have gotten. No matter how grim or nihilistic it seemed, it was still underpinned with self-determination, or love and humanity. David Bowie was able to do it 100 times over, and most of us never succeed in getting there even once. If anything, Transindifference appreciates the absurdity as well as the mechanics of all that.”
Pre-order Transindifference here, and keep up with the band at their official site, as well as on Facebook and Twitter.
