Spiritualized - New York Irving Plaza - 14/10/03
5/5
By: Joshua K
Set-List: 'This Little Life Of Mine', 'Come Together', 'Walking With Jesus', 'Hold On', 'She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit)', 'Lord Let It Rain On Me', 'Oh Baby', 'Cheapster', 'Medication', 'Lay It Down Slow', 'Never Going Back', 'Ballad of Ritchie Lee', 'Electric Mainline', 'Rated X', 'Run', 'Take Your Time', 'Smiles'.
The Spiritualized experience has always revolved around charting life's major dichotomies - love and loss; salvation and damnation; pleasure and pain... at times all at once - and the conflicted, often inconsistent ways we, as fallible creatures, approach them. And while the words mattered, the power and shifting dynamics of his music are what make mainman Jason Pierce's vision unique: an unlikely fusion of church song, Stones-y blues rock, acid-trip euphoria and smacked-out depression.
Therefore, following the release of the moving 'Let It Come Down' LP two years ago, your reviewer was especially disheartened to find that Spiritualized - playing a US tour of actual churches - had devolved into a flaccid mess. The performances were too trippy for their own good (after all, while the band may jam, they aren't a jam band), nigh-on structureless, with percussion solos that lasted longer than some of the minor Crusades.
So say your hosannas for the passing of time and change of record-label. For while it's debatable how stripped-back latest LP 'Amazing Grace' really is, there's no question that the live show has been reborn as a streamlined monster firing on all cylinders.
Highlights, then? An hour and forty-five minutes of 'em. From an intense 'Come Together' to the guitar explosions of 'Medication' and wall-of-sound enveloping 'Lord Let It Rain On Me'. From the cracked, feel-his-pain vocals of 'Lay It Down Slow' to the hypnotic builds of 'Electric Mainline' and harmonica-n-organ bursts of 'Walking With Jesus'. All enhanced by a simple yet effective (read blindly-bright) light show powerful enough to send even the straight-edged tripping.
The result: 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.
Artists in this article: Spiritualized
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