text: The 2002 release of Lil' Beethoven, the duo's self-proclaimed "genre-defining opus", fused repetitive song structures with orchestral arrangements, and brought them renewed critical success.  In 2015, the band released an album with Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand, as the supergroup FFS, titled FFS. In 2017, returning to a rock-group format, Sparks released Hippopotamus, which entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 7, as did their next album, A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, released in 2020, bringing their tally of UK Top 10 albums to four. In 2021, Sparks were involved in two films: the Leos Carax musical film Annette for which they wrote all songs (winning the César Award for Best Original Music), and the Edgar Wright documentary The Sparks Brothers recounting the history of the band. The band's latest album, The Girl Is Crying in Her Latte, was released on May 26, 2023, via Island Records, and again entered the UK Albums Chart at no. 7.
  History
  Inception
  Brothers Ron and Russell Mael grew up in Pacific Palisades, in west Los Angeles County, California, during the "Golden Age" of the L.A. club scene, when the Doors, the Standells, and Love played the Whisky a Go Go on Sunset Strip and the Beach Boys played in the late afternoon at  Teen-Age Fair at Pickwick Recreation Center in Burbank, California.
  Both Ron and Russell Mael are seen in the audience during the Ronettes' section of the concert film The Big T.N.T. Show, filmed in 1965. Both attended UCLA, Ron studying cinema and graphic art and Russell, theatre arts and filmmaking. Detesting the folk music scene, which they considered "cerebral and sedate and we had no time for that", they developed a particular taste in English bands of the time such as the Who, Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, the Kinks and the Move, which led to their description of themselves as "Anglophiles".