They say you make your own luck. In the case of Spiritualized, for protagonist Jason Pierce, aka J Spaceman, that’s a double-edged sword. Pierce’s tumultuous, substance-laden lifestyle has undoubtedly contributed to the bad luck Pierce’s medical dramas over recent years – a near-death event a few years ago, compounded by six months of medical treatment last year.
Conversely, the fact that Pierce can continue to create records of the unbridled quality of the latest Spiritualized album, Sweet Heart Sweet Light, is a matter of talent, not good luck. Opening with the swelling ambient spiritualism of Huh, Pierce segues seamlessly into garage pop with the Velvets-inspired Hey Jane; on Little Girl Spiritualized is in psychedelic MOR territory where the sparkling Californian waters take on hitherto unknown shape and form. On You Get What You Deserve Pierce returns to the dirty Manchester clubs of 1987 finding memories of a world lost to chemical exploration; on Too Late Pierce loiters in the shadows of love, pondering what might have been.
From there the mood swings from sadness to bravado – witness the Stooges-esque Headin’ For The Top Now for some grime-filled melodic rhetoric. Freedom is quaint and touching, I Am What I Am is New York attitude through the eyes of a Detroit shop rat and Mary drips with emotion. Life Is A Problem is the ultimate under-statement constructed in a ambient haze; So Long You Pretty Thing is reflective English religious whimsy when the stiff upper lip has been softened by the blows of life in all its confronting guises.
By rights Jason Pierce should have entered the realms of departed musical legends many years ago. The fact that he hasn’t is a miracle that even the Vatican should acknowledge.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: I Am What I Am
If You Like This, You’ll Like These: ARETHA FRANKLIN, COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH and, obviously, SPACEMAN 3
In A Word: Spiritual
