SPARKLE*JETS U.K. - Box Of Letters
Big Stir Records proudly announces the July 19 release on Deluxe Vinyl, CD, and Streaming of the new album BOX OF LETTERS from beloved Southern California guitar pop veterans SPARKLE*JETS U.K. -- the band's first full-length set of original music since 2002. The album arrives hot on the heels of the band's triumphant return last year with the acclaimed double LP covers collection Best Of Friends, and it's been heralded by the single “Box Of Letters (Single Mix)” with “I Can't Wait For Summer” soon to follow.
On BOX OF LETTERS, sparklejets u.k. -- vocalist-guitarist SUSAN WEST, singer-guitarist-producer MICHAEL SIMMONS and bassist JAMIE KNIGHT, here chiefly augmented by longtime collaborators Tisha Boonyawatana (keys, vocals) and Joel Valder (drums) – make good on a promise left dangling at the end of 2002's Bamboo Lounge, an album crucial enough to the LA pop scene that it's been reissued twice in the years since. Famed in equal parts for their facility with unforgettable hooks, cheeky lyrical quirk, and the lead singer handoffs between Simmons and West, SJUK picks up right where they left off in the sense that their mutual love of The Beatles, Big Star, ELO and their '90s power pop of their peers still provides the bedrock to their sound. But the years have added layers of influences, nuance and versatility: few bands could deliver a set that evokes The Breeders, Steely Dan and The Beach Boys with equal ease and make them sound as natural together as sparklejets u.k. do on Box Of Letters.
The bottom line on this Box is that, after all this time, sparkle*jets u.k. sound positively invigorated to be playing their own music together, and the songs – some brand new, some having been developed over two decades – sound as fresh as anything on the airwaves or streaming services. A big part of the fun is toggling between the differing but complementary approaches of the two main songwriters: compare Susan's sly and snarky vocal on the giddy, alt-rock-tinged “Love Burn” with the sincere tenderness Michael brings to the gorgeously aching “Little Circles.” But as with any pair of ambitious, instinctively intelligent frontpersons from Lennon-McCartney on down, the dichotomy isn't that simple: West embodies nostalgic romanticism (albeit with a twist) on the '70s-informed title track “Box Of Letters”, and Simmons applies some acidic wit of his own to “I'm Away From My Desk”. The band's having palpable fun turning expectations on their ears all over the record: Cheap Trick crunch on “Goodbye X 3”, AM Gold vibes on “Princess Needy”, a Fleetwood Mac-worthy groove on the anthemic “Where Is The Moment”, the intricate push-pull rhythms and new wave charm of “One Two Tango”. An encyclopedic grasp of pop rock history is abundantly evident, but nothing here is by rote.
In truth, it's not contrast but chemistry that fuels the band on Box Of Letters. To borrow the title of their previous long player, it couldn't be more clear that you're listening to best of friends here. It's there in the signature vocal tradeoffs within the songs, and even more so in the band's legendarily majestic harmonies. That fine-tuned empathic vocal blend elevates “I Can't Wait For Summer” (an anthem if there ever was one for our heroes, who split their time between musical and educational careers) to Brian Wilson-worthy heights few can scale however hard they try, and SJUK make it sound effortless. And the harmonies form the core of the pair of covers – of course there are covers! -- which bookend the record and pay tribute to '60s roots of the power pop form. The closer, a rollicking tear through Moby Grape's “Hey Grandma”, is emblematic of the sparkle*jets live experience (the band's never been far from the stage for all the years between albums, and many of Box Of Letters' songs have been workshopped live the whole time). But it's the opener that stands as a true statement of purpose.
“Around the turn of the century, just after Bamboo Lounge was released, I got belatedly obsessed with The Zombies' Odessey and Oracle LP, as one does,” says Simmons. “I imagined a more aggressive version of ‘This Will Be Our Year’, hoping that it might lead off our third album as a bit of a manifesto. We felt that whatever we did next was really going to be the thing! This song would plant the flag and say 'This is our year, everybody... look up here! It just took a lot longer to happen.” In a way, it's fortunate that it did: years of creative maturation and sustained collaboration make this a richer experience of an album than what might have materialized in 2003. And we would have missed out on some of the newest songs, including the utterly contemporary “Where Is The Moment”, which for all its pitch-perfect 1974 production trappings delivers a message that couldn't be more essential today. “We’re still hopeful about 2024,” Michael concludes.
And well they should be: BOX OF LETTERS doesn't just encompass the time elapsed between their own albums, but the full rich history of guitar pop since its inception. More than just that, in an indie pop scene that's increasingly homogenous and backward looking, the band sounds like no one else, and they've crafted a genuinely forward-looking record of the kind that's all too rare. There's no doubt that it's been a long-incubating labor of love, but labor is not what leaps off its grooves... there's too much wildly inventive fun being had here to be resisted. Where is the moment? It's right here, and right now. And by all rights, this will be sparkle*jets u.k.'s year at last.
