Sparks – Mad!

Agree with others what a beautiful pressing and cool vinyl cover this is. Great to get it and listen.

Agreed with the other comments. This is a good press! The color is beautiful, the lenticular cover is a nice touch and I love the booklet and gatefold! A killer album at that too. Buy it!

Only 200 copies of these, I believe. I've got several variants, so I haven't even opened this one yet. Very cool to have though. Other editions sound great, so I imagine this one does, too. Well done to Sparks for getting Mad! to number 2 in the charts ✨️

Quality tape. Nice presentation. Great album, compliments The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte well!

Not their best album, but still good.

It has all the ingredients that we love about Sparks. Catchy melodies, lyrics that go from silly to deep and often are even both at the same time, but a certain spark (no pun intended) is missing. Their previous album THE GIRL... was already a bit of a grower, compared to the stone cold back to back masterpieces that were HIPPOPOTAMUS and DRIP, and MAD! has similar problems to grip one right from the first listen. After listening to the album for a whole weekend on an endless loop, I would only put the opener DO THINGS MY OWN WAY in the "new favourites" category, with an honorable mention to HIT ME, BABY.

Now should we be alarmed? Is our timeline really that bad, that even Sparks need to retire before it gets emberassing? No, not at all. It's a light and breezy listen, well made and still standing out from the pop landscape of any decade. And it's not like this is Sparks' first less-than-5-stars album in their long career. It's far from being actually bad. If Discogs would allow half stars, this would be a solid 3.5/5. So I settle on four.

Sounds and looks amazing, only gripe is it isn't a gatefold and doesn't come with a booklet, just a cardboard sleeve with lyrics :(

Flawless pressing. Deep bass,excellent separation and production. No harshness at all. No ticks or pops. Lovely lenticular sleeve. Colour booklet with pics and lyrics.
And...the music is superb...Quite heavy..Best Sparks album in a long time.
Reviewed on Linn LP12/Ekos/Ortofon Windfeld ti/Ortofon ST80-SE/Dynavector P-75/Bel Canto eVo2i/Shahinian Arc.
Highly recommended.