Sparks - Hippopotamus

The middle stuff were the years they were trying to break America which kind of diluted their sound though it still ended up being far more eccentric than anything else in the US charts at the time.

They were Anglophile Americans who broke first in this country then Europe during the 1970s before returning home where they were barely known. They ceased their home phase around 1988, attempted to finance and write a film before returning in 1994 and hitting their stride from Lil’ Beethoven onwards.

That was the album I marked as their return to brilliance. It is, as you say, a great record