Sparta
Sparta
DINE ALONE
There’s no question about whether it’s the profiles of Cedric Bixler-Zavala and Omar Rodríguez-López that were biggest to emerge out of seminal El Paso post-hardcore band At the Drive-In. Partly, that’s down to the pair’s flamboyance—both musical and in terms of stage presence—but also in large part because of their work together with The Mars Volta over the years after the dissolution of their first band.
And while they don’t not deserve all that attention, you have to feel slightly for Jim Ward, who certainly made vital contributions to that band’s output in those early years. He founded Sparta after At the Drive-In called it quits (the first time, in 2001), but after three albums—not to mention one of the best covers of Jawbreaker’s “Kiss the Bottle”—the band kind of just faded away without fanfare after the release of 2006’s third LP, Threes. It took 14 years for Sparta, in somewhat altered form, to return with 2020’s fourth album Trust the River, but they’re already back again with its follow-up.
And although now just a two-piece comprised of Ward and bassist Matt Miller, Sparta is very much a full-band album. It kicks off in restless fashion with the jittery energy of “Kill the Man, Eat the Man” and “It Goes.” Neither are as out-there as anything Ward made with his former bandmates or anything those two have made since, but the connection is so audible it’s almost tangible. But then the record immediately shifts into the mellower strains of “Three Rivers” and “Hello Rabbit,” which have more in common with Ward’s solo output.
All of which is to say that this self-titled record is the sound of Ward both finding and re-finding himself, his heritage and future coalescing with (mostly) youthful ebullience, as on the effervescent “Slip Away,” the underwater tremulations of “Until the Kingdom Comes,” and the hyperactive “Mind Over Matter.” And yet, “Just Wait” offers a tender moment of singer-songwriter fragility, while the moody and haunting “Spiders”—which features a stunning vocal accompaniment from Angelica Garcia—is a powerful dose of Gothic emotional outpouring. Closer “True to Form” returns to the same kind of style and sound that started the record.
As this final song builds toward its crescendo, you hear the past get both quieter and louder, further away and closer, as unshakeable and impermanent as ever. That’s something cemented at the track’s end by the inclusion of an impassioned soundbite of Beto O’Rourke, who represented the band’s hometown when he was in Congress. In it he talks—somewhat against his usual neoliberal tendencies—about the importance of, and the justification for, athletes like Colin Kaepernick taking a knee before football games to protest police brutality. That may have now stopped, but white supremacy—especially within the police force—certainly hasn’t. The more things change, it seems, the more they stay the same.
