Sparta

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It all started with John Candy. Some 31 years after the comedian’s death, Jim Ward was watching a documentary about him, and in it Macaulay Culkin—who had starred in a number of films with the late actor—said something that really stuck with the musician. So much so, in fact, that, after months of pondering and overthinking what Sparta’s sixth full-length album would be named, Ward decided that those very words—“cut a silhouette”—should be the title. “He said that when he met John Candy, he just entered your brain and cut a silhouette,” says Ward. “Like, he just left an impression is the way I see it. And when I heard him say that, I was like ‘Oh! That’s what I want this record to be.’ I want it to leave an impression. At this point in my career, that's what I yearn for. I'm working so hard to make something meaningful to me, and I really want people to get a chance to feel it as well.”

Of course, Ward’s 30-plus year career in music has already cut plenty of silhouettes, first as a vital member of pioneering post-hardcore outfit At The Drive-In, then as the frontman of Sparta. The latter released their first album, Wiretap Scars, in 2002, second record Porcelain in 2004, and third LP, Threes, in 2006. Due to a couple of hiatuses, a fourth album, Trust The River, didn’t arrive until 2020, followed two years later by a self-titled fifth album. But there have also been a handful of solo releases, a collaborative album with poet Bobby Byrd, and an LP and an EP by Sleepercar, Ward’s alternative country project, not to mention successful anniversary tours celebrating those first two Sparta albums. It all adds up to a legacy—and yes, that’s the correct word to use—that has been leaving an indelible impression on people for a long time now. “I'm humbled by that,” he says, “and appreciative of it. I don't dismiss it at all. I spend a lot of time listening to people tell me how important the music I’ve been a part of making is to them, and it's not lost on me, but it's also not about me in that moment. So I'm more than aware of it. I've been living it for a really long time and I’m really fucking grateful for it.”Though it doesn’t necessarily move Ward in the here and now—the past, after all, is the past— it nevertheless still has an impact on the present, and the music he makes in it.“Some of what comes through all that,” he continues, “is the question of am I ever going to do this again? Do I want to do this again? Do I have anything to add to anything? Is anything I want to say important enough for anyone to give a fuck about? That's why that phrase hit me so hard. Because when you come out the other side, you’re like ‘Oh, this is something I believe in, and that I think will leave an impression.’”

He isn’t exaggerating. Produced, engineered and recorded in seven days at the Magpie Cage Recording Studio by the iconic J. Robbins—“When I was 15, he was the center of my musical world,” beams Ward, “so who better for me to want to impress than my literal hero?”—Cut A Silhouette begins with the frantic, impassioned rush of “Split Lip” before charging into the urgent insistence of “Crater”. The latter song, along with “Mouthbreather”, which immediately follows it, were both written with Frank Iero, though the My Chemical Romance guitarist doesn’t play on them. “See You Soon”, a gorgeous, lilting explosion of slow-motion power-pop, was co-written with Kemble Walters (Chevelle, Juliette And The Licks). He does play on that song, as does Adrian Borgeois, who adds some tender piano to the melancholy equation. J. Robbins also features on a number of the songs, as does Brooks Harlan, who plays in Jawbox with Robbins, as well as in War On Women, while Carlos Arévalo from Chicano Batman plays guitar on the hopeful fragility of “Midnights”.

Really, though, this is pure, unadulterated Sparta. These days completed by bassist Matt Miller and drummer Neil Hennessey, the band have made a record that’s a culmination of the perfectly imperfect chemistry that flows between the three of them. Cut A Silhouette, then, is a collision of past and present. It builds off Sparta’s legacy, but equally continues the evolution of a band that has never rested on its laurels. The only thing on this record that shines as much as that chemistry between the trio is the community spirit that helped create it. Recorded in just seven days, Ward felt himself traveling back in time in the studio, yet also—as ever—forging forwards while doing so.“It feels like a return to the community I came from and I love,” says Wars. “All the early At The Drive-In stuff was done in no more than a week until Relationship Of Command. Then Sparta sort of existed in this world of major labels and million dollar budgets and craziness. It's so easy to look at that now and say I don't belong there, but at the time I was trying really hard. When I go back and look at photos, though, to me it always looks like I'm wearing somebody else's clothes. It doesn't seem natural. So when Equal Vision asked me 'Why do you want to come here?' I said, 'I just want to come home.' They represent a community that I feel comfortable in—people that are doing it for the same reason that I do it.”

While you might expect that last self-titled previous full-length to have been the one to bring Sparta home—after all, self-titled records are often made with that intention—that’s actually the role Ward has given Cut A Silhouette. But he admits that the previous record—one he says felt like it was made from disparate parts being brought together—was a necessary process to go through for this one to exist. “This feels like we're a fucking band again,” he says. “All three of us are in a room, we're all writing together, we're listening to each other—this is now a constructive creative process, and it's now the end of this era. Like, I made it through.”That’s a sentiment summed up by album finale “Glimmer”. A gorgeous, redemptive anthem, it’s a soul-searching dose of optimism and intention, a new beginning blossoming from the dust of what once was. And while that still remains—and will forever—Cut A Silhouette aims to leave an ever greater impression from this point on.“Before this time period,” continues Ward, “I was struggling in a lot of ways, like a lot of people were coming out of COVID. But it was also being in the midpart of your career, when you're at the beginning of being washed up or old or seeing gray hair and wrinkles, when you feel out of date and irrelevant. I was just like, ‘What the fuck am I doing with my life?' We'd done tours celebrating the anniversaries of Wiretap Scars and Porcelain, but I don't want to live on that nostalgia. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin. So whether I did it on purpose or not, with this album I think I sabotaged my way to freedom.”

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