If indulging in one’s creative impulses hastens the process of fulfilling the potential residing in oneself (c.f. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs), New York musician Cale Parks should be attaining that actualization any second now. But creativity, unlike those cut-and-dried physical needs like hunger and shelter, is a bit stickier. Whereas most of our drives are met via external sources, the self must act as the provenance for expression, and this, of course, is a double-edged sword: what an artist may crown as achievement, an onlooker may judge otherwise. And when rendering the observer free to exploit his or her own devices at the artwork’s expense, criticism can be conducted with microscopic insight or heedless apathy.
After now releasing the first of two solo records this year, it’s easy for the onlooker to lump Parks, also drummer for Aloha and White Williams, with other bastions of prolificacy such as Aidan Baker, Magik Markers, and the Capstan Shafts, whom we tend to treat with amiable nonchalance upon each new release. But, perhaps due to the respectable pedigree that Sparklace hails, it’s also not hard to wonder at how this record falls so insufferably flat. The chief mistake here is overindulgence. Whether it’s the culmination of a desire to drastically experiment after adhering to relatively undeviating formulas in his other two projects or because Parks simply justifies his fidgetiness because this is his own effort, Sparklace lacks any patent unifier. Bookended between two largely superfluous field recordings, the eight songs on this album bear little resemblance to one another.
Incorporating ingredients of disco, funk, pop, techno, rock, and more, Parks showcases an extensive scope of influences, but ultimately fails in hemming each stitch into one cohesive mesh. That is, the sources from which he extracts to create his material are not the issue, nor are his ambitions; the issue is his inability to emerge with something distinctly connected. Few moments sound alike: “Every Week Ends” features stop-start vocal snippets murmured over a cornily danceable groove; “A Long Time in the Air” pops with a Caribbean beat, blasé harmonies, and a plucked, summery riff; “Some Sew, Some Find” rides on an ascending sing-along, a hyperactive, never-ending drumroll and punchy, spasmodic horns.
And to scratch beyond that immediately apparent surface exhumes further problems: Sparklace is unsuccessful in delivering even a few decent singles (save for “Two Haunt Me,” with its ethereal guest female vocals). But this sad nugget of truth is only acknowledgeable after having delved scrupulously into Sparklace, and with something as consequential as its absence of overarching solidarity, it may not even be worth one’s while.
With time and continued endeavors into the creative process, maybe Parks will apply to his individual approach what he and his fellow musical cohorts have profited from with Aloha and White Williams: a distinctly fluid personality molded and carved from a hodgepodge of influences. At that point, whether or not creativity is another rung closer to actualization may not be worth debating; Parks will have just made everybody happy.
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