Sparkadia: Let There Be Light

Alex Burnett is having a very good year. ‘Morning Light’, a song that constitutes a buoyant if bittersweet filtering of the elements, has taken his band, Sparkadia, onto the airwaves via Triple J and Sydney FBi. Two weeks ago the track, along with four others, were released as ‘Things Behind The Sun’, the Sydney group’s debut EP. In a week Sparkadia open nationally for British outfit elbow. In a few months they’ll be in London, recording their debut album.

“We’re really lucky,” insists Burnett, a quietly-spoken 24-year-old. Right now he’s sitting in the house of Josephine Ayling, a friend who’s just become the fourth member of Sparkadia, joining guitarist/vocalist Burnett, drummer Dave Hall and bass player Nick Rabone. “It gives us the extra option of having someone do something strange during the second verse,” notes Burnett, “although now we have to split the money four ways.”

Burnett and Hall have long been musical collaborators. Several years ago, when their initial demos garnered a positive reaction in Sydney, they added two friends to the line-up and formed The Spark for live shows. But by the middle of last year they’d settled in the stillness of the horse latitudes – an American band also named The Spark were firing off legal letters about their trademarked name, the two additions had careers to attend to and little was happening.

Mid 2006 The Spark became Sparkadia, a quartet became a trio, and things began to happen. A domestic deal with Sydney-based label Boundary Sounds was signed and then their demo was the only CD in a car driven by an English A&R man in Sydney for a friend’s wedding. By the time he’d driven for 90 minutes out to the Hawkesbury River he wanted to sign them. And he did. Sparkadia are the second signing to ARK Recordings and the melancholic tangle of their sound may just cut through English musical xenophobia.

“We never really wanted to fly the Australian flag from a musical point of view,” notes Burnett. “We’ve never been Oz Rock and we’ve never had to worry about being unable to go overseas because other countries don’t care for Oz Rock. But I’m sure there’ll be plenty of other barriers – the English do love their English bands.”

But from a different perspective Sparkadia are patently Australian: their songs capture the glint of sand under the engorged sun and the backing of life lived near the surf. Their English A&R rep thinks they’re the sound of a summer holiday “I grew up on the beach, so all those elements are engrained within me,” agrees Burnett. “We don’t live near the beach anymore, but those natural elements are still present.”

Nonetheless their EP has a melancholic undertow that offsets the blithe tempo. “Songwriting occurs when something is not what you want it to be, whether it’s something you wish would happen or something you wished hadn’t happened,” explains Burnett. “You want to make something clearer, but you have to have that tension in the song otherwise it’s just about feeling great and cool. And there’s no point to that. At the same time there’s a hopefulness to [our music], a sense that things can be resolved without emo tears.”

With ARK’s blessing the band will fly to London to record their debut disc at London’s Moloko Studio with producer and “audio nerd” Ben Hillier (Doves, Blur). Before then there’s a succession of show, including three East Coast dates with Elbow, where the band will hear shouted requests for ‘Morning Light’ from the audience. They’re learning to deal with it.

Bar Broadway, Sydney
Friday 2 March

The Tote, Melbourne
Thursday 15 March

The Laundry, Melbourne
Friday 16 March
(with Belles Will Ring)

Click Click @ Brown Alley, Melbourne
Saturday 17 March
(with Belles Will Ring)

Mona Vale Hotel, Sydney
Sunday 25 March
(with Ground Components)

Ric’s Café, Brisbane
Friday 30 March

The Great Escape Festival, Sydney
Saturday 7 April

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