Spiritualized

Spiritualized make Drug Music. There’s no getting away from it. It’s not really that surprising though, as the bands driving force and only consistent member is Jason Pierce who was originally in Spaceman 3 who famously “Took drugs to make music to take drugs to”

The sounds and approaches used to make the albums have changed over the years and over the albums but the key to their sound is stoned slothful vocals, guitar drones and repetition (I’m with the Fall and Mark E Smith on the importance of the 3 R’s….Repetition, Repetition , Repetition). They also use the garage rock blasts of the Stooges or MC5 and gospel choirs, brass, strings and sometimes the full blown orchestra.

But it’s still drug music, written with the big themes of despair, release, heartbreak, and inertia. Love songs written with the language of drug use and an awareness of the history of Pop. Medication, Electric Mainline or She Kissed Me And It Felt Like A Hit (itself a top Pop pun. He Hit Me And It Felt Like A Kiss was written by Goffin and King, sung by the Crystals and produced by the entirely hands free and cuddly Phil Spector). The packaging for Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space is based on a prescription drug blister pack and the cover for Amazing Grace is simply an outstretched arm…that’s probably a hitch hiking reference.

While playing with Patti Smith in 2005 he ended up in intensive care with pneumonia and his heart had stopped twice. One of his first visitors was Bobby Gillespie. Now there is a definite link between the narcotic and rock interests of Pierce and Gillespie and also in the broad musical sweep of what their bands do…but if I was in Pierce’s flat out position hooked up to a heart monitor, I’d have been happier to see a doctor than a careers adviser.

Without getting too What Hi Fi /Tales Of Topographic Oceans blah blah song cycle blah blah spiritual and musical journey blah blah in a sonic cathedral, about it, all the albums really do feel as if they have been written to be listened in one sitting.

1992’s Laser Guided Melodies starts off simply, delicately and gorgeously with You Know It’s True and moves into If I Were With Her Now, which has a bass line that sounds like it was at the same resort as Blur’s Girls And Boys.

Pure Phase came out in 1995 and uses a lot more strings and orchestral arrangements. Sometimes it’s nerve jangling and Day In The Life discordant, sometimes lush as on the dreamy Spread Your Wings. The albums a bit of a headphone challenge as the sounds move between channels leaving a baffled space between the ears…probably just what the Prankster Pierce intended.

1997’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space was written after girlfriend and early Spiritualized member Kate Radley left and secretly married Richard Ashcroft. It’s the definitive Spiritualized album with it’s staggering arrangements of strings and horns and songs of loss and heartbreak.

By contrast 2003’s Amazing Grace is a much more Stooges affair fused with the country Gospel Soul of an Exile On Main Street era Stones.

Pierce has previously said “I’d sooner have 20 flugelhorns on stage than money in the bank. The forthcoming tour is billed as acoustic however it will feature strings and a choir so it’s not going to be a busking ruse to save money.