There Is Nothing To Be Won but Distance
By Rick Sparkes + The Enablers
PEI indie rock group Rick Sparkes + The Enablers released their fourth full-length studio album, There Is Nothing To Be Won but Distance, in December.
The release quickly follows on the heels of the band’s two-time Music PEI Award-nominated 2023 album Picture Yourself in a Riot, due to what Sparkes, the band’s frontman, claims is a renewed sense of both optimism and rebellion.
Sparkes says that much of the material on the new album was written in the fall of 2023 and touches on a variety of subjects, including Hollywood, Scottish explorers, and 20th Century Canadian writers.
Sparkes does not shy away from weighing in on a number of hefty ideas on the album (the first single, “Car Crash Sequence,” for example, points a critical finger at an increasingly narcissistic, image-obsessed society); he does so from a safe “distance.”
“‘There Is Nothing To Be Won but Distance’ is a line I borrowed from Timothy Findley’s novel The Wars,” shares Sparkes. “I think the more we create distance between ourselves and the highs and lows of our lives, the closer we are to being our most authentic selves because, in those moments, we’re not so wrapped up in our emotions or our ego, and it was in those moments that I wrote this album.”
The new album is available on most streaming services, with a limited edition CD release. The band is planning a number of album release shows throughout the Maritimes this spring and summer.