Spiritualized, enters its third decade doing the one thing it has done and doing it well: building manifold soundscapes over rock and pop fundamentals, repetition unto transcendence.
Each track is reducible to some early Rock Rhythm and Blues motif.
Without comment or flourish, Spaceman presents a soundscape with a theme. Of sixteen tracks, ten are from the most recent two albums, including the four as-yet-unreleased tracks from this year’s delayed release, Everything Was Painless. With 2018’s And Nothing Hurt, it completes an inversion of Vonnegut’s second most ubiquitous quote from Slaughterhouse 5. What theme? As ambiguous as the quote, the warbling oscillation between satirical cynicism and raw, injured earnest.
Suite 1. Without preamble, it starts. J Spaceman, seated downstage left at a black music stand, bandleader of a dozen unlit musicians, keeps the beat relentless in silver shoes. The most dynamic thing on stage is the white sheet music being turned with the song. Three guitars, drums, bass, keys, pedal steel, harmonica, a trio of backup singers— in the dark everyone is alone.
Tongue firmly in cheek, tears clearly in eyes, the band kicks right off with “Hey Jane” [Huh?, 2012] and “She Kissed Me (Felt Like a Hit)” [Amazing Grace, 2003], basically rockabilly rave-ups pushed through the Spiritualized nostalgia machine. First big crest of the night, then a relative trough with the motorik waltz “Shine A Light” [Lazer Guided Melodies, 1992].
Suite 2. That was just preamble. Spaceman takes a moment, changes guitars, and moves into the meat of the show, a cohesive nine-song set from the current album. Here, he commits to the evening’s pattern: that dialogue between earnest and cynical, oscillating faster and fuller into eventual sympathy and frenetic release. As if all the screaming and crying and moaning and laughing and horror and joy in the world, all the living and dying just adds and adds until the buzz and hum climb up into a single sweet note of timeless rejoice. But of course, that’s too much for us mere mortals to maintain, and we fall into a refractory bittersweetness
The unreleased song, “I’m Coming Home” gets carried along by noire keys over plodding kick drum to psychotropic intensity.
Then the swayable RnB innocence of “A Perfect Miracle” and “I’m Your Man”.
“The Morning After” harmonica forward L.A. Blues. Half the audio dropped out, but not a beat is missed.
“Here It Comes (The Road) Let’s Go” homey narrative reassuring us that baby, it is alright.
“Best Thing You Never Had (D Song)” Spacey warble, whammy bar, and backup singer wailing.
“Let it bleed (for Iggy)” The wave crests again: big clunking guitars swagger and finally feedback to blues sway big beat come-on of “The A Song (Laid in Your Arms)”, the most honest song of the night climbing up on the drums and crying out — Yes! Finally!
“Damaged” is very classic, very felt. Wanna close my eyes, wanna take my time, wanna close my mind. Hypnagogic and remorseful, we’ve come to the sad end of the children’s crusade. Do we deserve a bookend?
Suite 3. Hold on, hold on. We do. “Soul On Fire” [2008] gives us all some mortal grace, and “Come Together [Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, 1997] rallies us with organ and good god, the feeling of this final build. “Sail On Through” floats us away, dreamy as a rowboat.
That’s the set. Without epilogue, the stage clears briefly, the band returning for what feels like an obligatory encore, but plays like a sweet little loadout, “So Long You Pretty Things” [Huh?].
Alone again, we disperse into the cold and windy night. We came together and stared, standing, at a dark stage, we rode those well-served swells. But I couldn’t help wish we were seated around a spotlit dance floor for sway and grasp strangers and old bruised lovers to waltz and two-step, hold and be held in that bittersweet space we live in below the holy buzz.
So it goes.
