Angst In My Pants

After ten albums in as many years, and after shifting gears from quirky rock to pure disco to new wave and back again, a reinvigorated Sparks returned to their rock roots with *Angst in My Pants* in 1982. The single from the album was “I Predict,” a fine enough number that undulates with cracking synths in a Robert Palmer kind of way, but which didn’t make much of an impression on radio. Maybe they should have released the hilarious and catchy title track first — which most casual fans know the album by — then followed it with “I Predict” or with the chunky and raucous “Eaten By the Monster of Love.” The charming Bay City Rollers-meets-Queen aesthetic of “The Decline and Fall of Me,” the martial pulse of “Tarzan and Jane,” and the daft celebration of facial hair on “Moustache” (“One hundred hairs make a man!”) are also well worth the price of admission. Shedding the tight glitter and polyester skin of their disco era proved to be a good thing in more ways than one: with more room to breathe, Russell Mael’s falsetto is especially impressive on “Nicotina,” and shows a new maturity with a more full-bodied sound throughout the album.

Although mired in a rut of merely "good" albums, Sparks had offered occasional glimpses of their old greatness on each, fanning the dim hope that they might climb again to previous heights.