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Ladies and Gentlemen, This is Spiritualized

A white pill tab sits on a blue backdrop (Ladies and Gentlemen we are floating in space album cover)

Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space was an important first for me. It was the first album I bought solely on recommendation from reviews, specifically the “4 out of 5” from Select Magazine and the “9 out of 10” from NME. I had slavishly been buying music journalism for over 12 months, but every album I purchased was always released by a popular act I already knew, like Radiohead, Primal Scream, or Blur. Apart from what I read, I had no idea what Spiritualized would sound like.

In the on-demand age of streaming and YouTube, the concept of physically buying an album without hearing a single track seems a bit perverse. Why risk a purchase when you can stream it? But this was 1997 when your only options were the radio or MTV.  In retrospect, given how hooked I was to indie radio—In the UK, The Radio 1 Evening Session with DJs Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley was essential listening for any indie kid—it seems unlikely that I wouldn’t have heard Spiritualized at some point. But if I had, it clearly didn’t register.

So this was blind faith in the opinion of others, a choice made more enticing by the high concept artwork: the cardboard box package marketed the album as a drug, the mock instruction leaflet warned about “side effects” and the CD that could only be retrieved by popping a blister pack. I’ve always been drawn to novelty packaging—in fact, the first music magazine I ever bought had Northern Irish punk band Ash mocked up as superheroes on a fake cereal box—so because the album was aesthetically pleasing enough, this big leap felt more like a tiny step.

The reviews used words like “symphonic” and “psychedelic” but nothing prepared me for the full force of Spiritualized. Before I heard this album, orchestras were things heard at the British Proms, used by the Beatles to segue between songs on “A Day In The Life”, or manipulatively used to wring out the emotions in windswept ballads. I had no idea about avant-garde composers like Penderecki or that strings could be every bit as brutal as a guitars. This album was both an education in sound and a potted history of music itself.

Throughout the album, Ladies and Gentlemen... embraces the euphoric joy of layered harmonies, especially on the eponymous opener. The volume carefully fades up over front man Jason Pierce’s muffled sigh, the twinkling of a hammered dulcimer and leisurely spaced out beeps, creating a feeling of infinite space. An expanse that—with a roll of the timpani—is then filled with looped strings, The London Community Choir and complex interlocking harmonies. The song portrays Pierce as a Major Tom-like figure drifting in space, repeating self-help mantras and riffing on old Elvis songs, holding onto the optimism of an all-consuming love despite being physically estranged from human contact. Even the most casual listener could place the base elements being channeled here—gospel, Beach Boys, psychedelia, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound—yet the mix yields to no single element. It all threatens to become a monotonous drone until the track ebbs away to Pierce’s solitary vocal. The great trick of the track is that even when the mix becomes crowded, Pierce’s character always sounds alone.

That tension between the surface and what is underneath plays out throughout the album, where the knotty contradictions of love are played out in the frictions between different styles. Take “Come Together”, a Doc Martens friendly garage stomper, propelled by the repetitive rhythm worthy of the Stooges, that thanks to the squalling strings could also be an aggressive waltz. The sharp relief of the styles also bleeds into the lyrics: the empathic chorus of “ Come on, come together” seems trite next to the foul-mouthed nihilism of the verses. “All My Thoughts” has a similar conflict: trying to reconcile between the soft brass lulling the listener to sleep and the howling vortex of shrill blues that rudely tears the roof off the track.

Not everything is so jarring. Sonically, “I Think I’m In Love” is one the most linear cuts here. The track has a lot going on—all kept in check by the rise and fall of a Hammond organ—but nothing is allowed to get in the way of Pierce’s sardonic call and response with himself. Rather then bother with any “love is the drug” allusions, the track loves messing up any comforting distinction between the two: “love in the middle of the afternoon, just me and my spike in my arm and my spoon”. It could be unsettling, if it was not for the soulful ecstasy of the choir that is too irresistible not to sway along to.

Both “Stay” and “Electricity” use generic lyrical tropes which, outside of album’s context, could appear bland to the casual listener—this might explain how I missed the latter single beforehand on the radio—yet both say much with so little. The former purrs to life, softly building to a sweeping key change before hiding the promised strings behind a wall of guitar fuzz. While “Electricity” not only makes good on it’s promise of harmonica-kissed blues rock, it gives itself a generous 90-second outro so it can indulge its honky-tonk fantasies.

If the last thee tracks sound almost conventional, then don’t worry, it’s in the second half when Ladies and Gentlemen… really gets its freak on. At times, this half almost feels like a singular movement broken into passages, veering frantically from one emotion to the other like a car skidding on ice.

The second half begins with “Home of the Brave”, an onslaught of bubbling drone and backwards phasing that acts as prologue to the the apocalyptic jazz of “The Individual”; together the tracks paint a picture of a guy nursing his loneliness with cheep booze and illegal prescriptions. They follow him from first sip to the messy aftermath; the violent impulses buried within are unleashed in a torrent of raging brass and screaming violins before quietly fading away.

A crystal clarity then dawns on “Broken Heart”, as horns and warm synth notes ring in a sense of contentment. Pierce willingly tries to submit to the higher power that the track attempts to conjure, whether that be god, drink, drugs or some mixture of the three.

However, this clarity is short lived as wedding bells announce “No God Only Religion”; cymbals clatter like swords on a battlefield and a psychedelic maelstrom of noise drags the listener in. At moments like this, it’s easy to see why journalists framed this album as being about Pierce’s break-up with former band mate Kate Radley, whom married Richard Ashcroft in secret in 1995.

That break-up anxiety is soothed by “Cool Waves”, a gospel number which is a refreshing blend of whispered lead vocals, lapping strings, and the Choir’s rich tones. The effect is so calming that the gimmicky instructions to not handle heavy machinery that came with the CD suddenly start to make sense.

“Cop Shoot Cop…”  is a closer steeped in film noir: smoky guitar lines curl in the air, Dr John’s distinctive jazz piano creeps, metallic drones screech, Spanish inflected brass sizzles, and an atheist gumshoe finds solace in random acts of violence. Unlike the Captain Tom character floating in the void of space in the opener, this detective loves the vitality of this dark crowded milieu for all it’s flaws. The track is a 17-minute jam that lifts the album out of solipsism and back into the world. Granted, it’s a world steeped in cinematic genre tropes but, as with the rest of the album, there is something reassuring about clichés when different styles clash underneath. The familiar suddenly feels reborn.

Perhaps more conventional then Spiritualized’s two predecessors, Ladies and Gentlemen… is still by any standard a monumental achievement in weaving the previous 45 years of rock, punk, soul, and prog into a cohesive symphony of sound, all shot through with an aching vulnerability. Jason Pierce hasn’t quite matched it since, although 2018’s excellent And Nothing Hurt came teasingly close.

To a 16-year-old, it sounded like a crash course in rock and roll, and I was excited to see what unexpected treats other bands could offer next. But I wasn’t just going to keep a look out, I was going to write about it, too. The reviews that led me to Ladies and Gentlemen… instilled in me the importance of good music journalism; to pique the interest of the reader, to entice them to try something new, or to consider music from a different angle. It’s not about finding what’s cool but what pushes things forward.

For the past 25 years, I’ve closely followed and written about music, and it’s been wonderful. To this day, whenever I listen to something amazing, something that pushes music forward, it reminds me of Ladies and Gentlemen… And it feels like I’m floating in space.

Written by Matthew Mansell

I’ve been writing about music, film and comics for over 20 years. And I won’t stop now.

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