1998, BMG Entertainment
If you are familiar with Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (and you should be) you know what Spiritualized stands for. Anciently half of drone rock duo Spacemen 3 (the other is producing MGMT records...) Jason Pierce has been providing via Spiritualized music that will make anyone attracted by layered, electric and melodic yet powerful pop have an eargasm.
Starting with a four minute intro showcasing every instrument present in Jason Pierce beautifully chaotic idea of a band, the song (and every other one on this live record) segues into the next in a way that can just really be described as frictionless, sweet and beautiful. Seriously, imagine it like ice cream at the top of a mountain on a sunny summer day. That good.
If you had a vague idea of what crescendo means, let this band redefine it for you. This concert is an epic travel from a calm and soothing place to one where bashing your ears with oscillating organ sounds, walls of guitars and a rhythm section that makes every beat seem like you're being metronomically beaten by a baseball bat feels like a good thing, then go back to the blissful consonance of the beginning.
Lyrics are supposed to be mournful, drug induced laments about misery, spirituality and life (or something). To me, they just sound good. Pierce's voice has some mourning aspect to it, but what comes out of it in the end (for me, at least) is that underneath all the complaining Spiritualized is just trying to make some quite beautiful, and powerful, music. Not that far from Spacemen 3's sense of eternally going down in some musical abyss, Spiritualized nevertheless manages to come out of the hole the Spacemen were digging for themselves. And on this record, they do it gloriously: not by providing some grandiose climax, but by resolving the tension they accumulate through soothing fade-outs and ultimately, silence.
"You know I've been thinking about not coming down,
You know I've been thinking about not coming down,
You know I've been thinking about not coming down,
You know I've been thinking about not coming down,
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JNCT
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