Search - Spiritualized :: Songs in A&E (W/Book) (Dlx)

The album fills you with joy and tears. Maybe Jason Pierce's

South End | 06/08/2008

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Spiritualized return with their first new album since 2003's "Amazing Grace". Since then frontman Jason Pierce was brushed with death and an unpleasant respiratory disease.

The fifth studio album (in 18 years) from his drone-rock group finds Pierce in even more fragile condition than usual. A former heroin addict, he has been through the wars, a bout of pneumonia leaving him in intensive care.

Conflict (romantic, political and psychological) and recovery (in terms of forgiveness and acceptance) are the themes of a gritty little masterpiece that delivers emotional wallop, simultaneously harrowing and gorgeous. Pierce frames his weak voice with the textural detail of strings, choirs and squalls of feedback.

Most of these songs were written before his bout with illness with the newest material here being some gorgeous instrumental interludes ("H1-6") composed in honour of friend, Harmony Korine for whom he composed the score for last year's film, "Mister Lonely" (and whose wife, Rachel duets with him on "Don't Hold Me Close").

What Spiritualized do is record depression and hell along with joy, mania and heaven. Epic in the sense in of a great journey, "Songs in A&E" is a marvel and a struggle to enjoy.

A winter of despair and a spring of hope, an epoch of belief and the epoch of incredulity, we are all going direct to heaven and we were all going direct the other way.

Entering the world of Spiritualized is seeing the views from the highest mountains and staring into the nadir. Pierce sings of a sweet-talking angle, then switches to the thinking of drinking himself into a coma, as the sound of a ventilator fills his lungs.

"Death play a fiddle, play a song and I will sing along". Yet the bipolar swings back. "Baby you set my soul on fire... I have got a hurricane inside my veins and want to stay forever".

The album's central wig-out moment, "Baby I'm Just A Fool", builds from simple strumming to a free jazz blow out.

This was always Pierce's genius: the ability to take such simplicity and make it seem effortlessly affecting.

"Songs in A & E " is full of Pierce's struggles and all our struggles. Minds that try to fly elevated and bodies that drag us down to the animal. "When we are together we stand so tall, but part of me falls to the floor."

The album fills you with joy and tears. But this is what Spiritualized always do - admittedly brilliantly.

The grim reaper's boney fingerprints are all over this album.

But "Songs In A&E" is ultimately positive and strangely life-affirming despite ending with the words: ''funeral parlour, funeral parlour...''.

The only criticism is that there is little new ground.

But the power of Spiritualized is the fear, pain, joy and love are so contagious.

Songs in A + E really drags you down to the worst of times and takes you up to the best of times.

Just as a coclusion, , this warm, crackly mess of a record comes as an unexpected but welcome surprise.

Displaying most of the aspects that make indie rock worthwhile, Pierce has chosen to make his most life-affirming record after suffering from his poorest health. It seems life can be strange, and mercifully, surprising. Now, more than ever, Spiritualized are less about the trip into the outer limits and more about the frailty of love and mystery of individual existence. As such, "Songs in A & M" may be his finest moment.

Standouts : "Death Take Your Fiddle", "Sitting On Fire"."

You were born on a black day shot with starlight

E. A Solinas | MD USA | 05/28/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I'm going to guess that the title of "Songs in A&E" refers to Jason Pierce nearly dying of pneumonia during the album's recording.



It's a relatively appropriate title for Spiritualized's latest album, because the lyrics are all about illness -- not of the body, but the distrust and bleakness inside a soul. It's a relatively dark sound for the music -- a satiny mass of ethereal mellotron, brass, guitar and soaring strings, when Pierce isn't driving it into darker areas of rock'n'roll.



"Well, you sweet talk like an angel/With a heart full of lies," J Spaceman (aka Jason Pierce) creaks over a bittersweetly gorgeous pop ballad, backed by a suitably angelic-sounding "ooooooooo"-singing chorale. By the time the trumpets blast in, the song has built itself up to a truly epic climax -- and Pierce is still singing bleakly about how the lover who sweet-talks like an angel.



Bask in the glow for a moment. There are plenty of songs in this vein, like the warmly psychedelic, unabashedly upbeat "Soul Fire," as well as dramatic pop epics, some ghostly little folk ballads wrapped in mellotron and strings. And despite its un-intimate-sounding title, "Don't Hold Me Close" is a weirdly soothing little stretch of somnolent pop, which sounds like it was fed through an old radio.



But not all these songs are feel-good ones. The unnerving folk "Death Take Your Fiddle" is punctuated with the respirator's creak, there are a couple of swirling psychpop numbers, and a Rolling-Stonesian blues-rocker "Yeah Yeah!" And near the end, Pierce drives us into creepsville with "Borrowed Your Gun," a weird little number about a little boy telling Dad he's sorry "I borrowed your gun again/shot up your family..."



And the entire album is peppered with these little "Harmony" interludes -- hesitant piano, delicate mellotron, angelic voices, wind chimes, accordion. The spasming violin of "Harmony Four" did nothing for me, though. And I'm not sure what these noodling interludes are for, except just to... be there.



Listening to "Songs in A&E" is like sitting in a cafe with an old friend who has had a tough year, and listening to the problems that have been troubling them. You see a few new lines from all the stress, with perhaps a few moments of bitterness, but a new strength shines from their eyes. It gets a bit painful at first, but then you start appreciating them more.



And then there's the fact that the music is simply brilliant -- an orchestral tapestry of shimmering mellotron, eerie synth, blasts of smooth brass, and violins winding a gentle glowing path through the softer songs. Pierce grounds the music a bit with folky acoustics, as well as occasional blasting riffs and growling basslines. And you get a few other little touches -- wind chimes, triangles, accordion -- around the edges.



Pierce sounds kind of tired in this album -- he sounds a bit like a worn-out blues musician, even when he rocks out in "Yeah Yeah." But he definitely hasn't lost his knack for really brilliant lyrics, whether dark ("morphine, codeine, whisky, they wo't alter/The way I feel the way now that death is not around") or beautiful (""You were born on a black day shot through with starlight/and all the angels singing just about got it right").



Despite a string of noodly interludes that contribute nothing, "Songs in A&E" streams from one excellent Spiritualized song to another, full of beauty, bitterness and great music."

Another British gem that Americans will ignore

Musek F. Anne | Paris, France | 06/21/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I can't really understand it, but for some reason, the country that gave the world the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Who, Clapton, Hendrix's Experience, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, etc., has been virtually ignored by American music listeners since, well, the late-70s/early-80s (we can argue about British punk in America). I've heard it explained this way: hip-hop never really caught on in Britain but exploded in the US, and wiped England off the musical consciousness of Americans. Who knows. I have an alternative theory: that America's rightward shift, profound conservatism and navel-gazing resists more adventurous music and instead seeks out sound-a-like bands that mimic whoever's big at the moment (Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Beck, NIN, whatever).



The fact remains, the Smiths barely registered in the US, as did the Stone Roses, My Bloody Valentine, the Libertines, Suede... Oasis caught on a bit, but Blur sure didn't. Even Radiohead (minus "Creep") have been more underground in the US than above- (kinda like Bowie was in the 70s, when he was at his artistic peak).



Spiritualized may well be the greatest British alternative "band" of the 90s-to-present that most Americans have never heard of (ditto for Pierce's Spacemen 3 in the 80s). I'd call "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" the "Dark Side of the Moon" of the 90s, except those who expected guitar solos and instead were treated to white noise and free jazz workouts would probably throw it out upon first listening. Although "Let It Come Down" has some incredibly great songs, I think "Songs in A&E" *is* their/his best and most consistent album since "Ladies and Gentlemen..." I too was at first bothered by the seeming sparseness of some of the arrangements, as well as the cracked vocals which are way out in front of the mix, but it has really grown on me, and definitely seems like a good direction for Pierce to move in (unlike the atrocious latest from Sigur Ros).



Other songs on the album may jump out quicker (e.g. the Stones-like "Sweet Talk," the much remarked-about "Death Take Your Fiddle," and the catchy "Soul on Fire"), but the song that gains in depth every time I hear it is "Baby I'm Just a Fool."



If you're new to the band, I recommend this, "Ladies and Gentlemen," "Let It Come Down," "Lazer Guided Melodies" and "Pure Phase." And Spacemen 3."