Kimono My House (1974)

Kimono My House is the third studio album by American rock band Sparks, released on May 1, 1974, by Island Records. The album is considered to be their commercial breakthrough, and was met with widespread acclaim.

Preceded by the single "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us", Kimono My House peaked at No. 4 in the UK and No. 101 in the US. Retrospectively, Kimono My House is considered one of Sparks's best works and one of the best glam rock albums.

Background

In 1973, Ron and Russell Mael accepted an offer to relocate from Los Angeles to London in order to participate in the UK glam rock scene. The previous lineup of Earle Mankey, James Mankey and Harley Feinstein was replaced with English musicians; Martin Gordon, Adrian Fisher and Norman "Dinky" Diamond joined the band to play bass guitar, guitar and drums respectively. The band signed a recording contract with Island Records and recorded Kimono My House in 1974. Although the Mael brothers had wanted Roy Wood to produce the album, he was unavailable, so Muff Winwood was hired instead. Winwood remained with the group to produce the follow-up studio album Propaganda later in 1974.

Title

The album gets its title from a line in one of its songs, "Hasta Mañana, Monsieur", and is a pun on the title of the 1951 song "Come On-a My House", made famous by American singer and actress Rosemary Clooney. The pun has precedents, however, in the track "Kimona My House" from jazz guitarist Dick Garcia's studio album A Message from Garcia (1956), and later in a season one episode of the television show That Girl entitled "Kimono My House".

Sound

Musically, Kimono My House represented a shift in sound and a focusing of Ron Mael's songwriting (now the indisputable principal songwriter). Sparks' two studio albums with the Mankey brothers had been diverse albums that featured a number of different styles, such as a cover of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Do-Re-Mi"; "Here Comes Bob", which was performed by a small string section; and "The Louvre", which mixed both English and French lyrics.

The new album embraced the more pop-oriented side of the Mael brothers' song-writing, which had previously been evident in songs such as "Wonder Girl" and "High C". Now, with challenging arrangements by the new English line-up and Winwood's simpler production, the songs were more focused. The album slotted in with the current popularity of glam rock, which was dominating the charts (in particular, the more experimental work of Roxy Music and David Bowie). Lyrically, the songs remained unusual and humorous; the band's pop-cultural references, puns and peculiar sexual content, sung in a countertenor vocal range by Russell Mael, set Sparks apart from other groups.

The particularity of their sound, which matched pop songwriting with complex lyrics, defined the group to their UK audience. Integral to the sound were Fisher's guitar playing and Gordon's Rickenbacker bass guitar. The novel input of these two competent and innovative musicians constituted a successful formula which was maintained only until the tour which followed the release of Kimono My House, with Gordon fired before the tour and Fisher afterwards.

The other key component of the Sparks sound in this period was Ron Mael's keyboard. On the previous two studio albums Ron had primarily used a Wurlitzer electronic piano, but he found that the instrument did not stand up well to the rigours of touring, because the metal reeds that generated the notes frequently broke. When the group relocated to the UK, Mael purchased an RMI Electra-Piano model 300. This instrument had three basic sound options (a piano sound, an organ sound and a harpsichord sound), but Mael used only the piano sound.

Although the basic tonal quality of the RMI was markedly inferior to a Wurlitzer or a Rhodes piano – Ron Mael later described it as "incredibly terrible" – it had several notable advantages for a touring musician. Unlike the electro-mechanical Wurlitzer and Rhodes, the RMI was a completely solid-state instrument, with each note generated by its own dedicated LC oscillator circuit, so it was both more robust and lighter than a Wurlitzer, and the tone generator circuits did not drift out of tune (which was a common problem for electronic keyboards at the time, like the Minimoog). Mael fed the instrument through an Echoplex tape delay unit, giving it the highly distinctive "shimmer" that features prominently on their breakthrough single "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us":

"It was the first time I was really aware that technology can give some kind of mystery to the sound. There was a kind of haunting quality to the RMI with the Echoplex. Real tape delay gave it a little of a wobbly feel. That sound, these days, you can approximate it, but to get that thing, you need the old gear. I'm not a big collector of vintage gear, but I kept that Echoplex, 'cause it's just such a beautiful machine."