MUSIC REVIEW | Sparta – Wiretap Scars (2002)

To recap, I never listened to At the Drive-In when the rest of the world did. So now I’m making up for lost time with that band, and the two who came after their split. So far, At the Drive-In underwhelmed me with how little they surprised me. While The Mars Volta gave me half of a really great, unique heavy album, dabbling in lots of genres and sounds, and half an album of instrumental onanism and self pleasure. Which brings me to Sparta and Wiretap Scars.

At the Drive-In had the dudes with the hair, and the other dudes. Sparta was started by the other dudes. Like The Mars Volta, I can hear hints of their previous band, but also like The Mars Volta, Sparta builds on the good bits of At the Drive-In and ads something new to make it a little more individual than anything on Relationship of Command.

Definitely going for more traditional melodies than the other bands, Cut Your Ribbon and Air make Wiretap Scars the most immediately accessible of the three. While “accessible” can often shorthand for “boring” or “unambitious”, I wouldn’t use it in that way here. It’s just easier to latch onto straight away. Sure, when a band makes you work to appreciate their music, that payoff can be immense. But sometimes, I’m not in the mood to work hard to like a song. If I was introducing someone to this trio of bands, Sparta would probably be my suggested entry point.

When things slow down and quiet down on something like Light Burns Clear, I tend to get worried. I don’t expect bands to play the same thing all of the time, but the mid album slow down from heavy bands is just such a common, predictable thing, that regardless of the quality of the song, that gentle intro means I’m going to be predisposed to caring a little less. And the spoken word section in the middle reminds me of the absolute worse bits of At the Drive-In, when they were at their most pretentious.

Directly followed by Cataract and Red Alibi, a lot of goodwill earned by the first few tracks was being quickly squandered here by Sparta. Those three songs, back to back, made me more than a little wary about where Wiretap Scars was headed. Things start to recover and improve with RX Coup. The kind of melding of heavy, loud instrumentation and actual melody that evades so many bands who deal in heavy, loud instrumentation. Then it’s back to quiet blanditude with Glasshouse Tarot and Echodyne Harmonic.

Oh Sparta. Oh Wiretap Scars. You started so well and gave me such medium hopes. Now I know that what I took for deliberate simplicity in the opening songs was actually just your own limited skill as song writers. At the Drive-In and Relationship of Command was never bad, it was just never the watershed it had been built up to be. The Mars Volta and Deloused in the Comotorium was close to great, and while it’s second half took some of the shine of its first, there was enough first half shine there to take the hit. But with Sparta and Wiretap Scars, the second half is so mind numbingly boring, it makes me forget anything I liked about the first.

Sparta