Spiritualized.
@ the Blue Note
Columbia MO 11/01/03

How do you approach a person whose music you’ve enjoyed for about 10 years? What do you say to an artist whose earliest recordings inspired you to become a musician yourself? How do you explain that his latest offerings have left you cold? I don’t know the answers to these questions, I guess that’s why I found myself at a loss for words when I walked into Whizz Records on November 1 and saw Jason Pierce (nee Spaceman) rifling through the bluegrass bins. I knew that it was the perfect opportunity to offer a word of gratitude for the countless nights that the music of Spacmen 3 and Spiritualized rocked me into oblivion or lulled me into euphoria. But I was so hungover, I couldn’t think straight enough to formulate a suitable greeting. I mean, what do you say?

Besides, Pierce’s reputation as a rather disagreeable interview and his palpable aura of exclusion gave me enough of a clue to just shut up. It didn’t seem the time or the place.

I hadn’t seen Spiritualized in five years before I saw them at the Blue Note the day after Halloween (which is All Saints Day, appropriately enough). My expectations were mediocre. The band has seen numerous line-up changes and the only remaining member (besides ringleader Pierce, of course) of the band I last saw in 1998 at the Galaxy in St. Louis was the ridiculously named keyboard player, Thighpaulsandra. The last two studio offerings from Spiritualized, LET IT COME DOWN and AMAZING GRACE, recycle motifs and themes of Pierce’s earlier work, less effectively. I think they are watered down and repetitious, truthfully. AMAZING GRACE is being heralded as Spiritualized’s return to rock, but it seems to me a return to a couple of old songs from the back catalogue, with a few new lyrics. I hadn’t set my hopes too high for this show. But I would never miss a local show by this band, whose early to mid-nineties releases provided a soundtrack for my own formative experiments with music, love, and drugs.

I arrived just as the Soledad Bros began their last song. The bassist had dropped his axe to pick up a sax, which for one good friend signaled a point of no return. He hadn’t liked their set (which another friend said “had some really good bits in the middle”) up until that point, the unveiling of the saxophone just hammered the nail in the coffin. I didn’t really feel one way or the other about it as I was more concerned about the incredible lack of attendance to the program. It was still pretty early, though.

A few more bodies shuffled into the Blue Note before Spiritualized took the stage. Maybe the somewhat exorbitant door price turned people off, maybe it was the disclaimer warning light-sensitive people that the show’s intense stroboscopic light effects could cause seizures. I think that Halloween being the night before had some hand in it, too. I sure felt like hell.

I took a seat on the balcony, knowing that the lights and the sonic squall would be the attractions at this program. This point was made abundantly clear during the very first number, one of the high-energy tunes from AMAZING GRACE. A break in the song provided a silence, and the strobes got fired up and beamed out over the expectant crowd, who remained dead silent as the brilliant webs of light danced over their faces. It was actually quite effective, however ridiculous a “light-show solo” may seem. The band could have been faceless phantoms for all of the personality and energy they showed on stage. Pierce himself remained seated for the entire program, which suited his role as the Maestro of the group. He sounded more present than ever, even with two other guitarists on stage, and his voice was clear and confident. The band really sounded great, and all the new songs revealed themselves to be quite satisfying in a live setting. My friend turned to me and said “This is what Black Rebel Motorcycle Club wishes it sounded like!” and I agreed, but there was still a part of me that thought “and BRMC’s buzz is what Spiritualized wishes it could get a piece of.”

As the set spiraled on, yellow, green, and orange lights bathed the stage while bright white strobes and electric blue lasers fried the audience. One of the highlights of the set, “Let it Come Down,” provided the combination of bittersweet acceptance and overwhelming relief (the perfect soul balm for the hangover weary) that got me hooked to this stuff in the first place. And I hated that album! The sax-playing Soledad Brother came back out for “Cop Shoot Cop,” the blues shuffle that injects a free-noise freakout right into the mainline, and he just may have redeemed himself with some rather tasteful and unobtrusive brass coloring. The ballad “Hold On” left me wishing I’d worked up the nerve to say something to Pierce when I encountered him in the record store, surely he is a sympathetic soul? I felt a certain amount of closure, though, when someone from up higher in the balcony yelled out “We love you, Spaceman!” in between songs. My low expectations had been blown to bits by a band that proved themselves to be a tightly honed live unit (even if the drumming was not quite explosive). “Walking with Jesus” was a not-so-unexpected (but wholly welcomed) trip back to the Spacmen 3 days, but a bigger surprise was the very last song. “Smiles,” from the very first Spiritualized record, LASER GUIDED MELODIES, has long been a favorite of mine (and I’d never seen it performed live). But when the heavy build up of “Smiles,” perhaps the sweetest and simplest love song Pierce ever wrote, led into the Spacemen stomper “Things’ll Never Be the Same,” one of the most cynical and bitter rock songs of all time, I was beside myself. It was a rather ambiguous (but highly rocking!) end to a set that was mostly devoted to good vibes. But Pierce’s muffled “thank you” at the end of the night left it clear that the band had appreciated our attendance. Outside of the songs, it’s rare that he says anything at all.

- Trip Maker