Hippopotamus

After years spent on the radio musical The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman and the film musical Annette, and following the FFS album with Franz Ferdinand, the brothers set out to make a more traditional Sparks record of short songs. They worked on it over ten months from the start of 2016 to October, mostly in Russell's home studio in Los Angeles. BMG released it on 8 September 2017 rather than the brothers' own Lil' Beethoven label. BMG had just taken on their back-catalogue publishing, and Russell told PopMatters that the label side then asked to sign the album worldwide after hearing it.

It entered the UK chart at number seven, their first UK top ten album since Propaganda, and scored 81 on Metacritic from 18 reviews. Dave Simpson of The Guardian called it their best album in decades, singling out Probably Nothing, about age-related memory loss, and I Wish You Were Fun as one of the simplest, sweetest songs of their career. The video for Edith Piaf (Said It Better Than Me), directed by Joseph Wallace, used stop-motion puppets modelled on the brothers. Leos Carax sings and plays accordion on When You're a French Director.