SPARTA share “Everything You Say” from sixth album “Cut A Silhouette”

Sparta will always be deep in my heart, and it’s nice to see them still doing something interesting after all this time. The El Paso trio just shared “Everything You Say,” a new single from their sixth album “Cut A Silhouette,” out May 29 on Equal Vision Records and Dine Alone Records. Travis Shinn directed the video, which is up on YouTube.

The song came together fast. Bassist Matt Miller brought it to the earliest writing sessions at Jim Ward’s house in El Paso, they tweaked it in a hotel room in Oklahoma City, and they played it at soundcheck the same night. “It is one of those songs that takes shape early and no matter how you adjust, it just keeps ending up back where it started. I love it,” Ward says. “This is a dreamy song about longing and love. A big scream declaring desire.”

The album title started with a documentary. Some 31 years after John Candy’s death, Ward was watching a doc about him, and Macaulay Culkin — who’d starred in a few films with Candy — said something that lodged in his head. After months of pondering what to call the sixth Sparta record, that line settled it.

“He said that when he met John Candy, he just entered your brain and cut a silhouette,” Ward recalls. “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.”

J. Robbins produced, engineered and recorded the album in seven days at Magpie Cage Recording Studio. The songs were written across a year — in hotel rooms, practice spaces, studios, and soundchecks. “This is a love record,” Ward says. “I want it to leave an impression, and 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.”

The record opens with “Split Lip” and moves into “Crater,” then “Mouthbreather” — both of which Ward co-wrote with Frank Iero, though the My Chemical Romance guitarist doesn’t play on either. “See You Soon” was co-written with Kemble Walters (Chevelle, Juliette And The Licks), who does play on it, and Adrian Borgeois adds piano. Robbins himself features on a number of songs, as does Brooks Harlan, who plays in Jawbox with Robbins and in War On Women. Carlos Arévalo from Chicano Batman plays guitar on “Midnights.”

These days the lineup is Ward, Miller, and drummer Neil Hennessy. Where 2022’s self-titled record felt to Ward like disparate parts pulled together, this one feels different. “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.” Self-titled records are usually the homecoming move — Ward gives that role to “Cut A Silhouette” instead.

Press has been on the run-up already. Stereogum called “Crater” “a ripper” and noted “the post-hardcore crew is back.” SPIN wrote that Ward “speaks candidly about rediscovering purpose after years of fits and starts, and about rebuilding not just a band but a relationship with music itself.” Revolver clocked the album’s “tempo-jolted post-hardcore waltz” that “lunges towards galaxy-spiraling guitar noise, phosphorescent waves of bass fuzz and Ward’s yearningly, scratchily melodic vocal presence.” Consequence said “Crater” “feels epic.”

“Cut A Silhouette” is out May 29 via Equal Vision Records / Dine Alone Records.

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