Spiritualized - London Kentish Town Forum - 6/2/04
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
You wouldn't have come away from this with a tune in your head. You're barely able to make out simple shapes and sounds. This is intense, loud, brilliantly confrontational and replete with as much passion and sheer amount of dissonant distortion as perhaps melodic music can dare to be.
But, wait a minute - weren't we being lead to believe that Spiritualized had abandoned that plush, dense orchestral sound they were so famed for in favour of a more stripped-back rock and roll ethic, as featured on their new 'Amazing Grace' LP? Aren't they supposedly all bluesy, garage punk on us now?
On record, perhaps this is true. But live, it's a stinking pile of lies. Even in their most straightforward (and Spiritualized don't do 'straightforward' like other people do straightforward) rock moments - opener 'Electricity' for example - Jason Pierce's seven-piece crew are completely unaware of what the common definition of minimalism is. This is a thick, impenetrable clatter that either tests you with its cacophony and sheer volume, or worries you with the most heartbreaking love songs, to the extent that you think there may well be no good left in the world.
Yet, there is good; it's on this stage; it's just rarely particularly uplifting. When it is, however, it's not because it's luscious or blissful with joy (well, OK, 'Do Something' fits that category), but it's through just how technically gifted this band are. Pierce sits to the side of the stage, facing the rest of his gathering for a reason: he is the conductor, leading everything into chaos with the dip of a shoulder and bringing a stunningly sharp end to seemingly infinite white-noise with one nod of the head.
Visually, it's physically difficult to watch - someone obviously got the band a strobe-light for Christmas, and they aren't bored of it yet. And why would they be, when it works so well with the smoke-machine toy they got for their joint-birthday? So, often, you have to strain to get the vaguest of outlines of any of the group; but gloriously dense though the music is, everything comes across crystal clear. It needs to, for the shattering gloom of set-highlight 'Broken Heart' wouldn't sound nearly as intensely sad if this were all a mess.
And, thus, 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. But then, they continue - for another half-a-bloody hour.
It's by no means dreadful, but it is arguably self-indulgent, repetitive and frankly unnecessary, none of which are things we want to ascribe to this wonderful ensemble; 20-minute songs with lengthy wall-of-sound endings are all well and good, but really, this many of them...? We're not anti-experimentation, yet in this section the group themselves seem to be far more involved in it all than anyone else present.
But if 'anybody else' had treated you to a good hundred minutes of some of the best live music you'd seen in what's been far too long, you wouldn't complain. So we'll toss our own petty criticisms to one side; deep down, we knew this had the capacity to wallow in itself somewhat. At least they didn't get lost in the least inspiring moments. After all, we are - days later - still completely spellbound.
Artists in this article: Spiritualized
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