Spiritualized - Interview - Summer 2009
By: Various Scribes
[Rockfeedback caught up with Jason Pierce of Spiritualized at the recent, completely brilliant Primavera Festival in Barcelona. For exclusive footage of the show and interview, head back to the site upon its relaunch - mere weeks away - where all Rockfeedback TV footage will eventually be available to stream for free in the comfort of your own home.]
Rockfeedback: How much does this sort of setting at the Primavera festival influence a Spiritualized show? I think this could be quite a serene venue for it...
Jason Pierce: "I don't know how much it affects it. I think the amphitheatre is really beautiful and the sound in there is amazing, but I've only just got off a flight so I haven't had a chance to explore yet."
RFB: Fair enough! This year seems like it's going to be quite a seminal one: You'll been playing Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space from beginning to end at several shows - what was the decision behind revisiting that record?
JP: "We did a show with Nick Cave in Australia, and one of the shows was on top of Mount Buller, which is six and a half thousand feet high, probably the highest show we'd done for a long time. And nobody could walk up the stairs or nothing, it was hard work and I found myself sat there real late with Barry and Deborah (who ran those shows) and we stayed up all night hatching plans and one of them was to play that record live. We said "Maybe it's time to do that" as the band is phenomenal at the moment so it's something that we can excel with. But it's not something we're entering into lightly. It's not like we're just going to put together a performance. We're going to take that performance somewhere else with the orchestrations and the choir, so I think it's going to be a very special thing.
RFB: And what is it you want people to feel at a Spiritualized show, because it's an all-consuming experience from an audience perspective, as I would imagine it is for the performer as well?
JP: "All-consuming is good! We'd go for that. I say this all the time but the really beautiful bits in music are the most elusive, the hardest to get and that's what we go after and you get these pieces and you present them and you hold onto them for as long as you can. And when you get it, there really is an amazing power and glory to it, this great majesty that you feel and you only really feel it live. You can do your best to capture it, you can do your best to film it but it's not the same as feeling the air rushing at you. A glorious feeling."
RFB: Would you say that's the ultimate thing for you in Spiritualized, the live experience even more so than the records?
JP: "That's it y'know. You kinda have to do them both. And the big journey, the big leap is in recording because I guess with live you start with an awful lot of information that you know, you know how to get these kind of sounds, achieve this kind of feeling. In the studio however, you start with the opposite, you wanna go somewhere you've not been before, somewhere unchartered. So I guess you learn more in the studio, but that's important so that you can go out and play a different kind of live show."
RFB: In terms of the inception side of things, when you're writing the material to take into the studio, what sort of events in life trigger the words and the sentiments that you put forward.
JP: "All of it. There's not really any time off! Sometimes it can just be language, like a beautiful turn of phrase, or a couplet which makes you go "that's the most beautiful thing I've heard for a while". But I just try to throw down as much as I can so that I don't forget it all, and I just see what I've got when the time comes to make that record."
RFB: When you consider what's next for Spiritualized, after the immediate touring and the performance of that record, what would you hope follows?
JP: "We're going to record again soon, we're going to put a record together. I think this band is phenomenal and I think it's got to the stage where people know what our main goal is. It's not about fame or money, it's this glorious musical thing that is still quite rare, it's rare that people want to chase this thing in music. So much music is about posturing and trying to pass off someone else's moves as your own. So I think it's a good time for this band."
RFB: Absolutely, and with the troubled times we're having at the moment, giving people hope and salvation is possibly the most important message of them all wouldn't you say?
JP: I think music is important at any time: Good times, bad times, whatever. I could argue that it's the single most important thing as even when people aren't aware it's going in, it is going in.
Jason Pierce was talking to Toby L for Rockfeedback TV. Article compiled by Charlie Shawcross.
Artists in this article: Spiritualized