CAMBRIDGE, MA [September 6, 2024] – Travels With Brindle has found a new creative spark — and it can soon be heard everywhere from Boston to Bonn.
The lo-fi ukulele pop project from Massachusetts songwriter and artist Chelsea Spear is set to release a fully licensed cover of Sparks’ ‘70s classic “Tryouts For The Human Race” on Friday, September 6. It hits the streams a week before the arrival of its official music video, directed by Will Hall and inspired by Worcester native Robert Benchley’s 1928 short film The Sex Life of the Polyp.
Surrounding the cover is a flurry of live appearances, as Travels With Brindle performs at Gilman Park in Somerville with Balter Dance on the night of the release; followed by an appearance at the free and all-ages Jamaica Plain Music Festival on September 7. The project then heads south to Providence on September 27 to perform at AS220 with Folk the Empire.
The “Tryouts For The Human Race” cover kicks off a bit of a Sparks era for Spear, as it not only serves as the follow-up to last year’s well-received and literary-minded Notes From Undergrad album, but sets the tone for her latest covers record, a ukulele and banjolele reimagining of Sparks’ entire 1979 Giorgio Moroder-produced disco album No. 1 in Heaven. Her Sparks covers effort is her second since 2018’s I Love You Like A Cover, where she took on Alex Lahey’s debut album.
“One of the things that hit me about Sparks is how effective they are at pastiche and at making genres their own,” says Spear. “It feels like they learn the rules of a genre just so they can subvert them. The fact that Sparks inspire such strong feelings among their fanbase also lends itself well to cover songs – you can hear the joy in the recording.”
Spear recorded “Tryouts For The Human Race,” as well as the entirety of the Sparks cover album – set for release next year after a Kickstarter campaign launching September 17 helps to finance post-production – at the Boston Public Library.
Which is very Sparks-esque in its own right.
“When I finished Notes From Undergrad, I was antsy to start working on my next project, preferably something I could self-produce,” Spear says. “I had been listening to a lot of early 20th-century ukulele music to cleanse the palate, and after I saw Sparks in July 2023 I’d been listening to No. 1 in Heaven while I made dinner. When I was listening to side two, it hit me that ‘Beat the Clock’ sounded like a George Formby song, and then it hit me that ‘My Other Voice’ sounded like a Cliff Edwards song. At that moment I decided to record a song-for-song cover of No. 1 in Heaven.”
Here on “Tryouts For The Human Race,” Spear performs vocals, ukulele, finger snaps, and the essential torn paper snare – she purchased a magazine at a bookstore in the Back Bay and set to work ripping pages into a mic – creating a soundscape that takes the original’s disco-era leanings and strips it down to its essentials, allowing the vocal wordplay to shine through.
The track’s vocals were engineered by Spear’s longtime trusted collaborator Joel Edinberg, with ukulele arrangement by Sage Harrington and mastering by Josh Cohen. Spear helmed the ukulele recording and track mixing, and Catherine Maddux supplied the textured sleeve cover art.
Spear says the effort put in, both for “Tryouts For The Human Race” and the forthcoming record, was worth the time and investment.
“I wanted to be worthy of Sparks, after all!” she admits. “I learned new skills in playing and recording, from Formby and Reinhardt-style techniques to how to mix my songs so they sound like 78s.”
Sparks’ intricacy in their songwriting and sonic craftsmanship, which has allowed the Los Angeles band to endure, earning cult-like status several decades after forming in the ‘70s, was tough for Spear to crack. But she was able to identify each song’s core identity, and then break it down before rebuilding the Travels With Brindle sound around it. Spear notes how malleable Sparks songs tend to be, and how they can be reimagined and still retain their overall flair.
Of course, the project was not without its hiccups – from a few takes and sessions with Edinberg in attempting the vocals to capturing the certain peculiar energy that permeates through a Sparks song, no matter who is playing it or where they are creatively taking it.
“Some of the songs were easier to cover than others!” Spear notes. “A few of them lent themselves well to the instrument, and others required some work. ‘Tryouts’ was one of the tougher songs to reinterpret, since the original version is so minimal. My initial idea was to record something more in the style of Formby, but my attempts at arranging it didn’t work.”
A new collaborator in Harrington emerged from the promotional haze of the internet, and the pair had instant chemistry in bringing the band’s kinetic art-rock style to a stripped-down ukulele vibe.
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