To listen to the whole album, click here.
Alain Johannes is a well respected and very talented multi-instrumentalist. Having worked and contributed in many great bands such as Eleven, Desert Sessions, Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age and most recently Them Crooked Vultures, it’s a wonder why Alain Johannes is not regarded as one of the biggest stars of rock and roll for so many years.
Enter Spark.
Spark is Alain Johannes’ debut LP; it was created in mourning of Alain’s late wife, Natasha Shneider. In fact, despite Alain’s many musical connections, he turned down every offer of help for work on Spark, and this is why I fell in love with Spark, the fact that it was made entirely by Alain on his own, in his studio, using his cigar box over an entire weekend, which really defines the term “solo album” for me.
What I also enjoy about Spark is the amount of emotion that literally pours from it. This LP has obviously been a great tool for Alain to let out all of the feelings out and to be able to express them in the best way possible, through the art of music. Spark just proves that Alain is still thinking about Natasha constantly since her saddening death halfway through 2008.
The emotion from Alain also makes Spark the most pure, enlightening experience I’ve ever garnered from a listen of an album. It sounds so fresh, with traces of a pop-like quality in the songs “Endless Eyes” and “Return to You” while Spark also contains a darker and intriguing sound in many of the songs that follow.
Final reasons why I love this LP are the lyrics. The lyrics are of course about Natasha, but Alain has written them in a way that strays far away from the generic words that come from writing songs about a girl, Alain’s not making a Weezer record after all. The lyrics are somewhat obscure enough for many thoughts to be made upon a listen, yet everyone understands clearly where the sources of these lyrics are coming from.
I only have one negative comment to make about this LP, and that is the lack of variety in some songs. The songs “Make God Jealous” and “Unfinished Plan” do seem to be a lot lengthier than their actual time lengths, while the song “Gentle Ghosts” sounds very similar to the single “Endless Eyes”.
Overall:
This is album of the year for me, completely. Alain Johannes deserves to become a big star in the media’s eyes now purely for this album, yet alone his years of helping other artists sound good. Without doubt, I give Alain Johannes – Spark a 10/10.
To read an interview with Alain Johannes about Spark, click here.
