When both Spiritualized and Spectrum play the same venue nine days apart it’s dead easy to draw up all kinds of coincidence and irony parallels. Hell, the music crit review basically writes itself. However if there’s any kind of comparison to look for it’s how Sonic and Jason have both dealt with that long hazy shadow of Spacemen 3 – now seventeen years in the past.
After years of shows with just him and maybe an occasional guitarist, Sonic has a full-band version of Spectrum again. As usual, I’ll patiently await the full album but in the meantime it’s great to hear these songs again. I forget just how brutal of a rhythm guitarist Sonic is.
Some YouTube clips:
“How You Satisfy Me” (yes it was that dark in the club)
“Revolution”
“Suicide”
After years of adding and subtracting band members, Jason finally has a lean version of Spiritualized that sounds great without the overkill of previous full-band tours. Perhaps best of all, Jason was positively chatty (which means saying “thank you” twice) during the show. Songs In A&E is a terrific album. It seems like Jason has finally assembled something that hits just the right elements of skeletal, noise, and over the top excess. Some of the songs remind me of Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription – “Yeah Yeah” and “You Lie You Cheat sound like they could have come out “Things’ll Never Be The Same” rehearsals and “Baby I’m Just A Fool” could very well be a 2008 take of “Walkin’ With Jesus” if it wasn’t for the completely unexpected THIRD chord instead of the usual two.
“Come Together”
“Lord Can You Hear Me”
I damn hear had a heart attack when I read that headline! I thought I missed a reunion gig.
Thanks for making sure I’m totally awake!
*grumble*
^_^
when I saw the headline I thought you were writing about and old concert… not a reunion.. puffff..
Spectrum is just amazing… the last album with Captain Memphis is cool.. space-rock from a farm, to my ears.. and it is quite fine in my dictionary..
Spiritualized… well, to be honest Chris.. I really miss the early Spiritualized years.. After “pure phase” I think they have changing for the worst.. Jason has missunderstood psychedelia with gospel music… I dont want to be so critic with him but he made music that really captured me.. and for me it would have been best that since 1997 he better changed the name of his band.. he is spoiling it.
At least, we have Sonic making colourful psych vibes still, and the best of all is that the music is still vanguard.
Regards from North Lima, Perú
Wilder Gonzales.
http://www.myspace.com/wildergonzalesprojects
@honeythunder
Yeah, it was a cheap headline but what the hell…
@Wilder Gonzales
I was kinda lost with the last couple of Spz. albums, but I like Songs In A&E quite a bit – it’s reminiscent of his songs from Playing With Fire but not exactly a retread either. There’s no chance that Jason would go back to the old sound, and I’m glad that he isn’t. What would be the point?