Deep Cuts #02: Sparta – 'Wiretap Scars'
Textured post-post-hardcore from the Lonestar State.
Artist: Sparta
Title: Wiretap Scars
Release: August 13th, 2002
Label: DreamWorks Records
Listen here: Spotify | YouTube
Before we dive in to this record, first an anecdote. (And please, bear with me here—I promise I’m going somewhere with this.)
During the spectacular period of alternative music history known as the early 00s, I had tickets to see pop-punk luminaries Blink-182 perform on their 2004 worldwide Untitled Album stadium tour. As a kid from rural Australia who’d only recently moved to the ‘big smoke’ for the final years of high school, my radar for “cool” music was already somewhat restricted. Nonetheless, I was excited to see Blink on stage and even more excited to see their support act, Long Island’s Brand New, who were in the midst of touring their landmark sophomore effort, 2003’s Deja Entendu.
However, in March of that year, mid-way through Blink’s Australia tour, tragedy struck. Drummer Travis Barker broke his right foot, forcing the cancellation of the rest of the band’s Australian tour dates. I was gutted. Even having the remaining shows rescheduled for only six months away was of little consolation; Brand New had other international touring commitments and were forced to pull out from the rescheduled dates. Fortunately, replacing Brand New on these new Australian dates would be a little band from El Paso, Texas: Sparta.
In my preparation for the rescheduled show, I now needed to conduct further research. (Yes, I know. I’m a nerd. Deal with it.) Who was Sparta? Why were they picked as the replacement act? And, most importantly, what did they sound like? To answer these questions, I went to the local record store and sourced new material: At the Drive-In’s Relationship of Command (2000), The Mars Volta’s De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003), Sparta’s just-released sophomore album, Porcelain (2004), alongside their debut full-length, Wiretap Scars.
Although I didn’t know it at the time, this one little accident had suddenly exposed my formative teenage brain to an entire world and spectrum of music. My sonic wheelhouse at this point was filled with all-too familiar MTV names: Blink-182, Sum 41, Green Day, Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Eminem. The most eclectic items in my CD wallet (remember those?) were burnt copies of records from Taking Back Sunday and Brand New. I didn’t know what ‘emo’ was, let alone understand the term as something scene-adjacent or potentially derogatory. Post-hardcore certainly wasn’t on my radar. Shit, prefixes as genre signifiers weren’t even part of my alternative music lexicon. Clearly, I had much to learn.
Even now, listening to Wiretap Scars feels like a rush. Album opener “Cut Your Ribbon” bristles with angular, distorted guitar riffs, anchored in a loud-soft-LOUD verse-chorus dynamic. Moments of stomped pedal histrionics, crashing drum fussillades, and spoken-word ambience haunt what follows across three furious minutes, but the track manages to hold your attention in a vice grip and refuses to let go.
Much of Wiretap Scars continues in this way: twelve cuts of urgent, churning post-hardcore, balanced by brief moments of respite, delicate atmospherics, and the omnipresence of raw, emotional vulnerability.
After the frisson and dissolution of At the Drive-In in 2001, the band’s members gravitated towards their natural musical inclinations. Not wanting to be hedged in by punk and hardcore, and sharing a desire to chase the progressive rock of Pink Floyd, lead vocalist/guitarist Cedric Bixler-Zavala and guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López went on to form The Mars Volta. The rhythmic core of the band—rhythm guitarist Jim Ward, bassist Paul Hinojos, and drummer Tony Hajjar—went in the more traditional rock direction to form Sparta. With Ward stepping up to provide lead vocals, Hinojos moved to guitar and new member Matt Miller was added in on bass. It was this quartet configuration that would hand-craft the sonic bedrock for Wiretap Scars.
Writing for The A.V. Club, Noel Murray declares that “Sparta has made a smartly produced, superficially exciting record full of deafening electric hum, full-throated shouts, and quiet, intricately picked guitar breaks.” Rolling Stone’s Steve Appleford argued further that Wiretap Scars was less about “massive decibels” and more about exploring “slippery post-punk sounds,” referencing the “emo-ish hand-wringing” of tracks like “Air” and the “pop-gothic” of “Cataract.”
In truth, a common complaint often leveled at Sparta and Wiretap Scars is that the band went “mainstream” and “sold out.” As Eric Carr notes for Pitchfork, people in punk circles generally associate the word ‘accessible’ with “with bands who have compromised their artistic integrity to appease A&R men and move units.” And in some respects, this is an understandable reaction, albeit—I would argue—misplaced.
Sparta’s debut was released through DreamWorks Records, a major label at the time, and the record featured a more streamlined, modern rock sound than the highly combustible sonic shrapnel of At the Drive-In’s back catalogue. However, through their former outfit, the band’s members had already achieved notable chart positions, MTV airplay, and late-night television performances on Conan O’Brien and David Letterman. Realistically then, viewing Wiretap Scars as some lofty or nefarious pursuit of big-time music industry dollars doesn’t hold much water. Additionally, this argument also vastly undervalues the breadth of complexity in composition present on the album.
For every charging riff, Wiretap Scars is also filled to the brim with moments on transcendent beauty. Melancholic cello caresses the plaintive verses of “Collapse,” right before Ward’s soaring vocals take flight against warbling synth flourishes. “Light Burns Clear” builds and builds with delicate melodic guitar lines, reminiscent of post-rock legends Explosions In The Sky and screamo stars Envy, juxtaposed against a call-and-response vocal chant, before arriving at a towering and cathartic crescendo.
Elsewhere on the record, Sparta are mindful enough to keep their roots well-grounded. “Red Alibi” sounds like Sunny Day Real Estate on steroids, laying the path for bands like Title Fight to eagerly follow. The double-time switch in the bridge of “RX Coup” is also suitably blood-pumping, while “Mye” evokes the swirling feedback texture of At the Drive In without falling into outright parody.
“Glasshouse Tarot” acts as Ward’s meditation on memory, regret, and loss, crunching back and forth on a seismically heavy riff transition: “This regret, it kills, you’ll never forget/ Take the time, this time, to say your goodbyes.” While the shimmering harmonic interplay on album closer “Assemble The Empire” still gives me goosebumps, even as the track’s intensity ramps up towards the record’s screaming, full-throttle finish.
I cherish a record like Wiretap Scars because of the mark it’s left on my life. As Ward croons on “Collapse”: “Words speak and choose/ Make sense and lose.” Ultimately, I may have chosen this record by—or more accurately through—accident, but its words still speak to me now, nearly two decades later.