Spiritualized
So some people were born in some place and went to some school and somewhere along the line learnt to play some instruments and broke some hearts and had some hearts broken and souls set on fire and troubles with the Lord. Some of these people went on to be in a band called Spacemen 3, and one of them was Jason Pierce. They played a mix of hypnotically minimal and transcendently noisy guitar rock that is as influential as it is brilliant. Then they split up.
In their wake arose Spiritualized, the main concern of Jason Pierce (or ‘J Spaceman’ – he’ll answer to either), intent on perfecting everything the Spacemen 3 aimed at, making the melodies more lush and gospel tinged, stripping the minimal sections back to the very marrow of the bone, and becoming the first truly symphonic indie band. He’s been at it ever since 1990, with Spacemen 3’s final album Recurring being essentially a split album where members of the band recorded entire songs separately from each other. Pierce’s solo songs pointed very much towards the direction he’d be going in with Spiritualized, and when a drastically altered cover of the Troggs’ ‘Anyway That You Want Me’ single initially went out under the Spacemen 3 name – when it was essentially a Spiritualized single – fellow member Pete Kember was so angry he disbanded Spacemen 3 for good. Yet because Pierce’s new project took most of the other members of Spacemen 3 with him, a technical clause meant that the new band, Spiritualized, had to maintain the Spacemen 3 record contract with Dedicated Records for a time.
Yet still, the split It was to be an act which spurred J Spaceman on to continue his Spiritual(ized) endeavours with renewed vigour, releasing a trio of EPs in 1991 (Feel So Sad, Run/IWant You and Smile/Sway) before eventually unleashing the debut Spiritualized full length Lazer Guided Melodies in ’92, supported by a slot on the Rollercoaster tour with kindred spirits like the Jesus and Mary Chain and Curve. The record had been recorded in Rugby, north England, over the previous two years. Perhaps a result of hanging out with such squalling company, the band went head on in to drone for a while, releasing a raucous EP entitled Electric Mainline in late 1993 and, now a trio consisting of Pierce, Kate Radley and Sean Cook, a record called Pure Phase, an impenetrable piece of shoe gazing clamour with separate stereo mixes in each channel soon after.
Presumably because after all that the band just couldn’t hear anything any more, things were stripped back just a little for their masterpiece; 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space had jazz piano, Spring Heel Jack and the London Community Gospel Choir on it, and is a 10/10, no arguing classic of an album, NME rightly naming it album of the year that December. The two disc LP that followed it a year later, Spiritualized – Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997, is a fine live accompaniment too.
After it however, the public found the Spiritualized line up all but unrecognisable, with Pierce firing enough of the band that they were able to instantly set up their own group without him in the shape of Lupine Howl. Recruiting a host of new members, many from Julian Cope’s backing band, Pierce set about taking the lushness of Ladies and Gentlemen to its logical extremes with the blissful Let It Come Down, released in 2001 after a four year break. It ended up featuring over 120 musicians in total.
After that, things simply had to be stripped back a bit (what was he doing to do, make an album with 121 musicians on it?), and so they were with 2003’s Amazing Grace, the blues rock and soul elements now far more noticeable than the luscious strings and gospel of yore. It was to be Spiritualized’s final record before a serious illness saw Pierce spend a long time in intensive care, a spell which would inform the sound and theme, not to mention title, of the band’s newest LP, Songs in A & E, released this week.
SPIRITUALIZED.COM: Probably the best designed official band site we’ve seen in some time, Spiritualized.com adopts the band’s visual aesthetic really rather well, and also manages to play on that paradox between humanity and coldness that the band’s music achieves to startling effect.
MYSPACE.COM/SPIRITUALIZED: Billed as ‘the official place to float in space!’, Spiritualized’s official MySpace profile has two tracks to stream from the new album as well as the essential cuts ‘I Think I’m In Love’ and ‘Stop Your Crying’. If you don’t know the band at all, I’d start with those two tracks if I were you.
DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN: “Driven by a suitably thunderous kettle-drum and Jason Pierce\'s uplifting vocals, a listen to \'DIAOA\' just makes you wish all bands could pull off such seemingly effortless masterstrokes on a regular basis...”
SHE KISSED ME (IT FELT LIKE A HIT): “If it weren’t for the oh-so-righteous stance on lo-fi rock ‘n’ roll from the 60’s and 70’s from names so trendy you don’t even recognise them, and the subsequent rebirth of earnest garage-punk, then Spiritualized wouldn’t have returned in 2003 with quite such a snarling, noisy, sleazy, swaggering, aloof and towering piece of ghetto-art…”
AMAZING GRACE: “Pierce’s concept of the notion ‘minimalism’ is – ironically – minimal. But not many can croon in a weedy, seedy tone, ‘You’ve got to hold on to those you hold dear,’ and get away with it with quite the same sincerity and charm as our Spaceman Jason…”
LIVE IN NEW YORK 2003: “It’s time, brothers and sisters, to testify. Lord, let us welcome the southern-gospel-rock-a-delia machine known as Spiritualized back into the temple of the redeemed. Fully and forever. Amen…”
LIVE IN LONDON 2004: “For a good hour and forty five minutes, there’s very little to fault. We get the best of their old material (‘I Think I’m In Love’ appearing from nowhere, ‘Come Together’ ever raging and blaring) and especially in the shape of ‘She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit)’, a menacing ‘This Little Life Of Mine’ and a wondrous ‘Lord Let It Rain On Me’, a tantalising taste of where this band reside presently.
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN WE ARE FLOATING IN SPACE:
COME TOGETHER:
SOUL ON FIRE: