Spiritualized
Songs in A&E (Fontana International/Spaceman)
By Soo Oh
Published: May 27th, 2008 | 2:13pm
What makes for good contemporary druggie music? In the past, it might have been about the live jam-band performance, but today, the thrilling highs and crushing lows of herbal and pharmaceutical curatives can't be found in the communal hive of saucer-eyed burnouts. The finest purveyors of narcotics-tinged rock delve deeper and craft their sounds for the introvert with a pair of sweet headphones. Just take a look at Spiritualized's Jason Pierce, whose fans may still know him as J Spaceman of '80s dope-rock outfit Spacemen 3. Their tongue-in-cheek title for demos album Taking Drugs to Make Music To Take Drugs To (1990) remains an axiom for the entire Spiritualized discography.
Its only original member to date, Pierce is the mastermind behind Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997), a critical success that dreamily played out his penchant for melancholic gospel rock. This week sees Spiritualized's first studio release in five years, but the wait comes with just cause: In 2005, a short time after recording Songs in A&E , Pierce nearly died from a bout with double pneumonia, which makes listening to the record an oddly prescient experience. Pensive and moody, wry and celebratory, the songs approach the horizon of death with equal parts elation and vengeance.
The album opens to an ethereal gospel choir, a band hallmark that always seems to provide an uplifting crescendo of vocals, signifying anything from divine retribution or the sweetness of a narcotic high: "Baby, never should say never," they belt out in single "Soul on Fire," "I've got a hurricane inside my veins and I want to stay forever." Such visceral sensations, whether stemming from real or artificial means, find aural kinship with the distortion and found sounds that sneak into the record, like the fuzzy static hanging above "I Gotta Fire" or the craggy, labored breathing of "Death Take Your Fiddle."
Heard through a scrim of fuzzy static, the eerie, hollow strings of the initially fragile "Sitting on Fire" rise up and balloon around Pierce's feeble croak. "So hard to fight when you're losing," he rasps, before the strings flesh out and give strength to his voice. This is a man who not long after singing those words lay on his deathbed. Thank heavens he fought. The colossal and spectacular Songs in A&E indicates a man back in shape, eager to tax his body once more for the benefit of trippers everywhere.
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Spiritualized's official Web site
Issue #29
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