TEAM RNS PRESENTS

RIPPER: Team RNS

228kbps avg - Rock
1hr 0min total-104.3mb

RELEASE DATE: 2004-07-13
RIP DATE: 2004-07-02

01 Guns Of Memorial Park          3:49
02 Hiss The Villain               3:28
03 While Oceana Sleeps            4:24

05 Breaking The Broken            3:47
06 Lines In Sand                  6:02

08 Death In The Family            3:37

10 Tensioning                     5:59
11 Travel By Bloodline            3:06

13 From Now To Never              8:39

15 Farewell Ruins (Bonus Track)   3:17

Tony Hajjar - drums
Paul Hinojos - guitar
Matt Miller - bass
Jim Ward - vocals, guitar, keys

"I just liked the word porcelain and
what it implied: Something that's really
beautiful and durable, but at the same
time vulnerable, easily shattered. I
like the duality."

Given Jim Ward's explanation, Sparta would
be hard pressed to find a more
appropriate title for its sophomore
album. From their childhood days
through their formative adult years,
the El Paso TX quartet has been
surrounded and defined by series of
precarious balances and dualities. On
Porcelain, these are analyzed,
illustrated and in turns celebrated: The
stark contrast of affluence and poverty on
the band's native El Paso/Juarez border
("La Cerca"), of innocence and its
aftermath ("Guns Of Memorial Park,"
"Death In The Family"), and so forth...
Ultimately, the result is a more mature
and accomplished voice than on any of the
four's previous efforts, one that
recognizes the power, as aptly
described on "Tensioning," in going from
"from a scream to a whisper."

Ironically, a crucial path to this
forward leap began with Sparta's
return its El Paso roots. Porcelain
began with writing and pre-production in
California's Joshua Tree, progressed to
tracking in Los Angeles and came full
circle with Ward recording vocals in
the band's native El Paso. "Coming back
to El Paso was a big part of this record,"
Ward says. "Every morning the route I
had to drive to the studio was right
along El Paso/Juarez border. That
reminded me on a daily basis of the
core values I'd lost touch with while
obsessing over so many other things."

The re-acclimation to the band's native
environs was accompanied by a radical
overhaul of the band's previous recording
techniques. "The recording process for
Porcelain was 100% different than
Wiretap Scars," recalls Tony Hajjar.
"Mike Major said to us You guys are a
great live band and I want to capture
that this time around.' So we spent one
day setting up and from there everyone
was recording at the same time."

"We were done with the musical framework
in twelve days," adds Ward. "But we had
blocked out six weeks for recording. So
we put that extra time to use,
experimenting and going in directions
we'd never dreamt of."

This new approach and subsequent
exploration are evident from first
guitar cascades of the jagged and
beautiful meditation on childhood memories
"Guns Of Memorial Park" to the last
dissonant notes and harrowing lyrical
images of "Splinters." The band's
sound has been polished by an 18-month
acid test of relentless touring, honed
both in clubs and theaters packed with
the band's loyal followers and on arena
stages shared with the likes of Weezer

The latter experience, humbling at
first, must have lent Sparta some of
the confidence that makes the new
record's material so expansive. On
tracks like the more subdued "Lines In
Sand" and "Tensioning," as well as the
epic "From Now To Never," moods, tempos
and textures shift and collide over the
course of five, six and even
eight-minute compositions. While the
trademark Sparta urgency remains steady
throughout, pleasant surprises abound:
string arrangements, more prominent
keyboards and electronic loops, and
even the band's first ever love song in
the form of "Breaking The Broken" (which
has already received an early thumbs up
from Rolling Stone). "I've always been
in bands where you don't talk about
that," Ward laughs. "But I'm married now
and that's a huge part of my life, so
it's going to be a huge part of my

Porcelain marks Ward's stepping to the
fore as Sparta's primary lyricist. Where
the band had previously collaborated on
the words he sang, the decision was
collectively made that he would take
over on the new recordand it's one his
bandmates are glad they made. "We're so
proud of him, lyrically, vocally, in
every way," Hajjar says. "You read his
heart on this record."

Ward's lyrics, at once elliptic and
emotive, come from a unique perspective:
the sum of experience of a childhood
spent on the border of El Paso, Texas
and Juarez, Mexico, teenage years spent
touring the world over, and somehow
always being the sole white member of
the bands he's co-founded. "I never
even thought about it," he says. "I
never considered myself white or as
belonging to any race really. My sister
is Hispanic, all my friends are, and I
think I've had maybe one white
girlfriend in my life. The only time
it's ever been an issue is when we're
overseas. Then it's almost an
embarrassment, to be the one who
represents the corporate American
white male... But hopefully that'll

While their friendships stretch back to
their childhood years, the origins of
Sparta as a band go back at least to
1994. The family tree begins with Ward,
Paul Hinojos and Hajjar playing in "At
the Drive-In", which Ward co-founded in
1994, and intersects with bassist Matt
Miller's former band Belknap (who
actually played at Ward's wedding).
Following the 2001 dissolution of "At the
Drive-In", Ward was contemplating
returning to college (he had started
prior to ATDI's non-stop
touring/recording regimen), while
unbeknownst to him, Hinojos and Hajjar
were already conceiving a new band and
envisioning Jim as their first choice

Sparta first emerged in the form of demo
versions of "Cut Your Ribbon," "Air" and
"Collapse" which went up in spring 2001
on the band's website. Likewise, Austere
featured early and alternate versions of
Wiretap Scars' "Cataract," "Mye," and
"Echodyne Harmonic" as well as the
non-LP "Vacant Skies." Primal as they
were, these formative efforts
nevertheless helped to build a following
almost instantaneously, as fans turned
out to watch the material evolve as
Sparta made its way from Texas to
Iceland and virtually all points in
between in its first eight months as a
band. Another tour or two later, Ward,
Hajjar, Hinojos and the recently
recruited Miller were in Vancouver,
where work would begin in earnest on
Wiretap Scars, the DreamWorks debut LP
released barely a year and a half after
those first tracks went up on

"No one's to blame for how hard and fast
we worked then," Hajjar says. "We felt
it was really important at the time to
go at that speed and not look back. In
retrospect, it was meant to happen that

That said, it's little wonder that
Sparta is already off to a promising
start on Porcelain some two and a half
months before the record's July 13
release. On May 1, the band tested its
mettle at its most intimidating live
show ever: the spot directly before
the reunited Pixies and Radiohead's
only U.S. show of 2004 at this year's
Coachella festival. Shedding their
jitters within a song or two, Sparta
soon locked into the live groove
producer/engineer Mike Major strove to
capture on Porcelain, quickly winning over
the capacity crowd. Capping off a set
described by the New York Times as
"surging" and "earnest," Ward exhorted
the 50,000 in attendance to make a
difference at the polls this November,
his white button-down emblazoned with a
highly visible red "VOTE." With warm-up
headline dates just behind and ahead of
them and a Lollapalooza taking them
through the summer of '04, there may well
be an even more productive and
successful 18-month stretch of touring
in Sparta's future. Given the early
reaction to the triumphant Porcelain,
it's difficult to imagine anything less.