May 15th – SPARKADIA RELEASE DEBUT ALBUM 'POSTCARDS' [CAT NO: ARK011CD] ON JULY 14th 2008 THROUGH ARK RECORDINGS
"This Sydney quartet is unsurprisingly finding favour in the UK with their retro-sounding guitar pop - think Echo and the Bunnymen with a dash of New Romantic" Sydney Daily Telegraph
"'Too Much To Do' – A fresh, zingy blast of uplifting guitar pop" Daily Star
"there's something very '80s about Sparkadia....it's more to do with the innocence and guilelessness of frontman Alex Burnett's lyrics. There's something very old-school about his simple evocations of love and loss" Q4 Music
"Sydney four piece Sparkadia certainly boast a well buffed pop sheen. But radio-friendly new single 'Too Much To Do', and significantly weightier fare like 'The Plague', marks them more as makeweights.
Charlie Ivens, The Fly
On July 14th Sparkadia will be releasing their debut album "Postcards" which is quite possibly the most replete and accomplished debut you'll hear this year.
The band's first single was the Guardian Guide single of the week and led Radio 1's Zane to declare them "one of the breakthrough acts of 2008." Subsequent single "Too Much To Do" was B listed by Radio 2, played by everyone from Colin Murray and Terry Wogan, and earned accolades from Mojo, Q4 Music and Guardian.co.uk.
Whilst the band have been touring with Vampire Weekend, Elbow, Pet Shop Boys and Jimmy Eat World, the album's artwork was confusing the good folks in London's Shepherd's Bush when it's giant lion's head was erected on the side of a building.
Formed by childhood friends, 25 year olds Alex Burnett (vocals, guitar) and Dave Hall, (drums) in 2004, the Sydney four-piece became a reality with the addition of Nick Rabone (bass) and Tiffany Preece (keyboards, guitar, vocals, and most recent addition to the band.) Tiffany gave up a promising acting career to join the band and a week later she found herself playing to 2,000 people in Belgium!. Together, they write modern pop songs that explode and shimmer and offer up a dozen snapshots of life that meld bittersweet lyrics and floating melodies with a sunny spin on heartbreak.
From the anthemic singles 'Too Much To Do' and 'Morning Light', to soon-to-be classics, 'Jealousy' and 'Connected', it's a collection of songs that have a timeless quality.
"Many of the songs on this album are postcards I wish I had sent, and others are ones I really wish I didn't have to send," says Alex. Each track was written in a different room in a different city over the past four years, before being affixed with a stamp and sent to the renowned Miloco Studios in London, where producer extraordinaire Ben Hillier (Blur, Depeche Mode, Doves) applied his deft production hand to give the album an expansive, cinematic feel. "We wrote a long wish list of producers that we wanted to use. Ben was probably the first realistic option as the two above him, Martin Hannett and Phil Spector, were dead and in jail respectively," muses Alex.
