A new Spiritualized thread for 2007 and onward

I posted that I'd be at that SF show on some other Spz thread, nobody cared :(

also man what a weird tour schedule - makes me feel lucky!

looking forward to both albums!

not to mention full US tour dates from Spiritualized, especially Texas dates -- Spectrum has been through the state *twice* this year, and the last time I saw Spiritualized was a two-night stand in Austin TX in...2003 i think. waaaaaay too long, Jason.

I keep missing Spectrum this time around, to my sorrow. Especially since he sounds like he's totally back on track.

I was really pissed that I was outta town when he's come through SF recently (also playing with Dean and Britta...? I've been curious about hearing their recent album with Spectrum on it, anybody checked that out...?

I've been curious about hearing their recent album with Spectrum on it, anybody checked that out...?

It's a great album - it's forward-facing rather than the unabashed retroness last one. You can definitely hear Sonic on it, but it's not nearly as much "Spectrumesque" as the Sonic Souvenirs EP.

(roffles at a Spiritualized thread with more posts about Spectrum in it)

I can post about how the last time I saw Spiritualized it was depressingly bad, if that'll make you feel better

Last time i saw them, they were great!

Anyone know anything about the movie Mister Lonely? Aside from the bizarroworld cast (David Blaine, James Fox, Werner Herzog, Samantha Morton, Anita Pallenberg ) the soundtrack is done by Jason and the Sun City Girls.

The HELL?

that is some serous whatthefuckitude

any movie with Abraham Lincoln, the Three Stooges, and Werner Herzog is a-okay with me

i heard it's shit, which is really no surprise given everything about it.

basically trying to tick every lame hipster box there is.

yeah hipsters love them some david blaine

lol enrique saying something is shit again

i know right. but i'm just passing on what i heard. obviously a movie by harmony korine and stunt-cast with (mostly) hipster non-actors (eg samantha morton) could be good, in theory.

i quite like harmony korine.

samantha morton IS terrible though

I really loved her in Sweet and Lowdown, haven't seen anything else I don't think

why is she a "non-actor" exactly?

Was at the Boston show at the MFA last night. It was so good I actually started crying. Mind you, it doesn't take very much to make me cry. Also, it was Jason's birthday! But yeah - it was pretty fantastic.

Beginning to feel bad at missing the tour this time around. Oh well, next time...

Album release news:

The new Spiritualized album will be released on Universal / Spaceman recordings on May 19th in the UK / Europe. More confirmed release dates, including North America, and extensive tour dates will follow.

Also, playing Coachella -- one of the VERY few bright spots.

no American release date?

Um, what part of 'More confirmed release dates, including North America, and extensive tour dates will follow' was unclear?

Well, even if "Amazing Grace" was a bit of a disappointment, I'm pretty excited by this. And, as someone upthread mentioned, Spectrum's supposed to have something coming out sometime soon-ish (though I haven't noticed anything on Sonic's newsletter mentioning it for awhile...)

New Mountain Goats, new Spiritualized, new Spectrum? Looking to be a pretty good year so far.

According to this Pitchfork article, Sonic actually has 3 new albums coming out.

Definitely a good year.

Songs in A&E is being downloaded now. :-)

18 songs, WTF?

this is sounding glorious.

Whoa, J's voice sounds ragged!

That wheezing sound on "Death Take Your Fiddle" makes me profoundly uncomfortable.

yayayayayayyayayaya

I heard mention that there will be hospital bracelets as promotional items for the new album.

i actually liked this a lot on first listen. seems like you can take out the Harmony songs, as they are just little breaks, so you can say it's 12 songs long instead of 18. i didn't feel like it was long while listening to it.

Mutter mutter mutter.

Is this actually worth my time?

This is kind of generic Spiritualized to the point of self-parody.

So that's a no, then?

Chris B, what do you think? I trust yr opinion.

He's been doing a lot of promo for Mister Lonely lately. I was kind of offered an interview with him, and then thought "what on earth do I have to ask him about?"

I'll probably buy the album anyway, even if it's rubbitch. Old idolisations die hard.

It doesn't have drones or tremolo or anything like that, lots of orchestration, some quite stripped down tracks with guitar and vocals to the forefront. It's exactly like the last couple really except not as good.

So no, you won't like it, and you'll probably grumble about it quite a lot if you hear it.

So the answer is, just ignore it and pretend it's not happening, and spend my money going off to see FreeLoveBabies playing along with fire alarms instead, and kidnap Will Carruthers, drag him off to Seahenge and force him to record another album? and/or wait for the Spectrum album? (What is going on with that, I'm ashamed to admit I have no idea. Sonic's always in the States these days.)

I listened to Amazing Grace for the first time in ages the other day, and actually really quite enjoyed it,particular highlights being The Power & The Glory and Cheapster.

I listened to about five minutes of this new one yesterday ad then had to cook Sunday lunch for my folks. I remember thinking his voice sounded ragged as fuck, and not a lot else.

Well, he has had a collapsed lung or double pneumonia or somesuch awful life threatening respiratory illness since then, so I think his voice is rather allowed to sound awful.

Anyway, why am I reading about this? I don't care. I AM NOT THE SLIGHTEST BIT INTERESTED IN ALL THIS.

I didn't know about his collapsed lung / pneumonia.

Halfway through there doesn't seem to be any kind of... purpose? Or aesthetic point? to this record. I don't know why Jason's made it, much the same way as I didn't really know why he'd bothered to make the last one. Other than because it's his job and he has to pay the mortgage like the rest of us. With the first four there seemed to be a definite drive, a definite aesthetic, even, at times, some stories to tell and some 'experiments' to try out, some sounds to test. Even if you didn't like Let It Come Down, it seemed like it had a purpose; i.e. to be an enormous, orchestral record in comparison to its predecessors. This one and the last one just seem like absolute bog-standard rock records.

I mean, there are some good bits of music; the funky drums and jazzy horns from 5.30 into Baby I'm Just A Fool are wicked, and reasonably unlike anything he's done before (in tone if not instrumentation), but... the thing is 'why?', why has he made this record?

Why does anyone make *any* record?

I think "Let It Come Down" was the only album where he actually had something to prove. (And dropped the ball spectacularly.)

It's a pointless exercise asking "why" with regard to any work of art.

True, I guess. I'm probably not expressing myself properly here. (And I really liked Let It Come Down! But ball-dropping's all relative.) Maybe I just mean that he doesn't sound like he has any new ideas anymore?

Actually thinking about it,maybe Amazing Grace did have 'a concept' or aesthetic; much of it was a lot rockier and more concise than previous stuff, so maybe it was his punk album? In which case, maybe I'm just trying to say that, these days, Jason Pierce, as accomplished as he may be, is just boring?

I love bagpipes. But accordions are WRONG WRONG WRONG.

I've come around on melodions, thanks to Spiers and Boden, but accordions? EVIL. I am sure the EKR is behind this somewhere.

Also, using an accordion to make a wheezing respirator sound when you've suffered a collapsed lung or whatever. Think about what an accordion looks like. Eww. It works though, because it actually IS unsettling in ways the rest of the album only hints at.

The Waves Crash In is the best Spiritualized song in 10 years, I love when it all builds up and almost turns into Ladies and Gentlemen... towards the end. Still not really feeling most of this though - the rockers are by and large terrible.

Actually, I was mistaken. It was Sonic who had the collapsed lung a few years ago. Jason just had double pneumonia (cue typical rant about "whatever I do, he always copies me, the first time he took acid *I* gave it to him" etc. etc.)

I can't believe I just made a joke that tasteless. OK, I'm off to boil my head.

I keep reading show reports about the Spectrum shows in Australia and being JEALOUS.

Opening and closing an accordian without holding down any keys is really bad for it! Way to fuck up the bellows, J.

Everyone else who's downloaded this; are you having problems with the track order? Soul On Fire WILL NOT MOVE from after Harmony 2 and Sitting On Fire despite the numbers being right? It goes 4, 6, 7, 5 in the column? wtf?!

It's exactly like the last couple really except not as good.

this is rong for all time. first in as much as the new one doesn't sound much like either of the last two, and in fact on odd occasion doesn't sound much like Spiritualized at all. second in that this is growing on me fast enough to suggest it's at least on a par with either. a bit more drone/noise wouldn't have hurt it, but there are golden moments here.

http://images.jupiterimages.com/common/detail/80/45/22424580.jpg

Kate, how much do you like Pure Phase?

"Everyone else who's downloaded this; are you having problems with the track order? Soul On Fire WILL NOT MOVE from after Harmony 2 and Sitting On Fire despite the numbers being right? It goes 4, 6, 7, 5 in the column? wtf?!"

At a guess and w/out having the files--some of the tracks have the Album Artist field in iTunes filled in and some don't. Make them all blank. Or fill them all. Whatever.

Done that; been through all the meta-data and unified it (I work in a library, innit!) and it's still happening. But NOT when I make a smart playlist based on the album's title.

The LP is on smack.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Picture12-1.png

Rugby Pne... what?

I love me Pure Phase. Not as much as I love Laser Guided Melodies, which is an album that it SCARES me how much I love it, and how well I know it, and despite how many times I've heard of it, I never get sick of it, and each time I listen to it feels like the first time and I want to tongue kiss that album I love it so much.

But, um... yeah. Pure Phase is lovely.

"Rugby Pneumonia Gospel Rock Drone". On my home iTunes it's "Rugby Smack Soul". I hate genre tags so try and make them vaguelly amusing (to me at least). Radiohead are "Oxford Prog".

But Pure Phase has nothing to do with pneumonia! How dare you!

::shakes fist::

Why put in genre tags at all? I never can be bothered to do so.

I only loaded in all the other albums this morning, having stuck in Songs In A&E the other day and picked that for the genre then. I do them... because I work in a library. I guess.

Also, Jason hasn't lived in (d)Rugby in a decade!

Death Take Your Fiddle is pretty awesome. I like this quite a bit now. Even the silly rockers. Much better than the last one.

After a 2nd listen the album definitely sounded better. It could definitely grow on me.

this is quite good. I still kinda miss the tremoloes and wubwubwubwubwub drones - seems like for the last three albums at least his emphasis is more on embellishing his songs with unusual arrangements of conventional sounds, rather than writing material around a particular combo of effects pedals and keyboard drones or whatever. which works when the songs are good, and hey I don't have a problem with the sounds of gospel choirs and strings and wah-wah guitars.

but gone are the days of not being able to figure out how he got a particular sound (maybe that's me and my ears' own problem, but there are things on those first few records that are still impenetrably dense and mystifying to me when I listen to them)

Interview with Jason Pierce and Mark Farrow on the new album's packaging design. Hilarious Jason quote at the end.
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/spiritualized-and-farrow-made-for-each-other/

Ha Ha. I asked JS to sign my Pure Phase glow-in-the-dark jewel box after a show in 1995, and he wrote "Jason '93." A Spacemen 3 reference perhaps, or did J simply forget what year it was? That same night, one of their entourage was busted for smoking pot and the band was banned for life from performing in Kent county MI (home to Grand Rapids). J in response to this: "I'm glad they didn't search the van."

Hilarious Jason quote at the end.

Co-sign.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/robdabank/

2am-4am
Rob da Bank and Friends
The A to Z of Spiritualized - The Original spaceman, Jason Pierce runs through 26 of his key tracks with Robby. There's Blues, gospel, shoegazing and more

(was sunday night and available on listenagain for a week)

Which is the hilarious bit?

I'm going to use this thread to express my surprise that I appear to have been played on 'Robby's show last night.

Anyway, that jason thing sounds good. Now I need to find 4 hours (or at least 2x2hours) to sit at the computer and listen to the whole thing.

So this is out today properly; how are people feeling about it now?

this is my favorite spiritualized album since Ladies and Gentlemen

i don't get what the pun is about the title in relation to his illness and hospitalization though, I assume that's some british thing

A&E = ER

The first half of this album pretty much sucks, but then it gets a lot better.

really? I thought it started pretty strong. I like this much more than amazing grace which I honestly can't even remember; and it sounds much better than let it come down, which I think is good, but I really dislike the mix

I guess I thought the first few were very Spz-by-numbers, kinda dreary.

a bitter-sweet lol @ spiritualized being the warm-up act on the lenny kravitz show that reaches my neck of teh woods this summer...

...lenny kravitz. fekkin hell.

Haven't heard this yet. Will pick it up tomorrow on its USA release date.

This is getting very close to awesome on headphones.

This is the thing with Spiritualized; I need to really lavish in their albums, and I just can't do that with hooky MP3s beforehand; I want a CD, in my CD player, with my big fuckoff headphones and my comfortable chair and make stupid faces and edge the volume up and up and squirm and air-drum and stuff.

I think one of the things I've missed over the last couple of albums is really out-there song structures - he's become a very classicst songwriter structurally, which was always a possibility, and I'm not sure he's THAT good at it - Death Take Your Fiddle, as he says himself, is pretty much just House Of The Rising Sun. I miss stuff like Shine A Light and I Think I'm In Love and the title track to LAGWAFIS. Often his classicist stuff is so formulaic in shape and progression that it doens't stick in my memory.

BUT he's such an awesome arranger / producer / musician that, at point of contact, if you pay attention, his stuff is almost always mind-blowing if you let it be. Soul On Fire may be slow and plodding and sound JUST like the kind of stuff Embrace do that I don't like masses, but he does it SO WELL; the guitar tone is just right, the strings just right, etcetera, etcetera.

I also think that melodically he's not hit amazing heights since Let It Come Down, which I think has his best pure vocal melodies ever.

I love this album, but I'd honestly be quite pleased if he were to remove the word "fire" from his songwriting vocabulary from this point forward.

I miss stuff like Shine A Light and I Think I'm In Love and the title track to LAGWAFIS.

This ^^

Nick very OTM re: song structures, he's gotten a bit predictable in that regard. The last time he really blew me away was "Out of Sight" off Let It Come Down; one of my favorite Spz songs. The last record was more straightforward, and what I've heard from this one -- "Soul on Fire," which I do like, and "Death Take Your Fiddle," which I'm indifferent to -- is similarly unsurprising, though pretty.

Well, I saw them last night for the first time in over 10 years.

I was crying at points... but with disappointment and frustration and just feeling like... this used to be my favourite band in teh world, and I just don't get it any more.

I seriously did not enjoy it, and felt all the more mystified for the outpourings of love that were going on around me. I didn't connect with the new material in teh slightest, and I felt almost... betrayed by the new versions of old songs. (Walking With Jesus as performed by the Travelling Wilburys? Make it STOP.)

I really am off the boat with this band. Enough. I've been disappointed too many times. I'm never getting my hopes up again.

So I haven't heard A&E yet. I'm a big fan of the first 3 albums and feel like there have been diminishing returns since Ladies & Gents. Amazing Grace was particularly weak for me. Can anyone convince of a good reason to get the new one?

the opening track is great.

Also a funny story:

An ex-gf of mine used to work at a church in L.A. that hosted J.'s AA meeting. He apparently tried to pick her up with some line about being in a band, but she didn't know who he was.

So then I took her to a Spiritualized show and she was all "I know that guy! He hit on me when he came to his AA meeting in L.A.!"

Go J.! Get down with your bad self!

New album is very good, and yes better than Amazing Grace.

its definitely better than Amazing Grace but even so I'd say I only really enjoy roughly half of it. His increasing non-interest in unusual sonic textures/instrumentation is a shame.

it's better than amazing grace but it kind of attempts the same thing that AG did....it just does it much better

Interview in recent issue of Arthur implied that he was pretty much sick of "studio trickery". It's a bummer because he's very good at it.

i have a completely opposite opinion of the current live show.I saw them a few weeks back & it renewed my faith in the band.I thought the show was brilliant & i was blown away by it.Spent the next 2 or 3 weeks listening to nothing but Spiritualized helped by the fact somebody put up a soundboard of the show i was at so i got to relive it over & over.That being said i agree that i miss the adventurous sounds he used to come up with.I think all his songs have pretty much always sounded the same it's just he altered the arrangements so much it was harder to notice.Starting with Let It All Come Down it seems he's fallen in love with traditional song structure & it's just not as interesting.I still like the records but i tend to cherrypick the best ones for comps now rather than listen to the albums as a whole.It's like the band is in a It's Only Rock & Roll phase of it's existence right now where he's just going through the motions of writing songs that sound like his old style.They're not quite as good but sound just Spiritualized enough to keep you listening.By the way if you want to hear that soundboard from Dallas here's the links.

http://www.divshare.com/download/5504426-573
http://www.divshare.com/download/5519269-e19

The interview with Jason in Arthur is a good read.

Interview in recent issue of Arthur implied that he was pretty much sick of "studio trickery". It's a bummer because he's very good at it.

yeah. i know it sounds awful to toast the drum mix of a song, but i think one of the problems of the last few records is just that he captured everything so definitively on ladies and gentlemen, songs and soundwise; if you've written the great syrupy stuff on that record, and spent like two years mixing it, then it's pointless to do it again small-scale on the next lp. the whispery stuff doesn't really do much for me, and it doesn't compare to home of the brave etc.

i gave up on spz a couple of years ago but have only heard good things about them being renewed and alive and stuff. i'd like to see them electric (because that strings tour was schmaltz). it's good to have j spaceman around, anyway.

this album is ALL about "The Waves Crash In"