Spiritualized

Certain Songs #2426: Spiritualized – “The Mainline Song”

August 20, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Everything Was Beautiful
Year: 2022

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And so just a few months ago, Spiritualized put out their ninth studio album, Everything Was Beautiful, and while it’s always a bit harder to determine instant favorites than it is to have them grow on you over time, sometimes, of course, songs just jump out at you. Like in the case of “The Mainline Song,” the soaring highlight of Everything Was Beautiful.

So here’s a thing: for nearly 20 years now, I don’t really process new music as individual albums, but rather as a big, ever-changing playlist I call “House Mix.” And so when I first heard gorgeous, soaring “ooooooooooh” vocals that dominated the first few minutes of “The Mainline Song,” my first thought was “wow, the Arcade Fire really are back!!”

Certain Songs #2425: Spiritualized – “Hey Jane”

August 19, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Year: 2012

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And so it went: every few years Spiritualized would put out a new album, and in the cases of 2003’s Amazing Grace and 2008’s Songs in A&E, they were good records without a song that utterly killed me.

That all changed when I heard the first single from 2012’s Sweet Heart Sweet Light, the utterly infectious “Hey Jane,” which had a high degree of difficulty — your instantly competing with the other great “Jane” songs, like future Certain Song “Sweet Jane” and “Jane Says,’ both of which are referenced in the lyrics.

Certain Songs #2424: Spiritualized – “The Twelve Steps”

August 18, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let it Come Down
Year: 2001

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It was, of course, inevitable that Jason Pierce would follow-up the already huge-sounding Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and the subsequent live album Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 by going even bigger. And so, it took four years and 115 musicians to put together the follow-up, 2001’s More Songs About Jesus And Drugs.

Oh wait, the Home Office is telling me that that album is called Let it Come Down. Sure, but I’ve been waiting to make that joke for 20 years, and sure as shit wasn’t gonna pass it up.

Certain Songs #2423: Spiritualized – “Take Your Time (Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997)”

August 17, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Year: 1998

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What goes up must come down. Not only is it one of the most immutable laws of nature, it works on nearly every single level: physical, spiritual, emotional, metaphorical. In all of history, only Prince’s guitar at the Grammys has ever been able to defy it. And it’s so deep in the heart of Spiritualized’s music that it was probably inevitable that Jason Spaceman Pierce would rail against it.

As he does on my absolutely favorite Spiritualized song, the live version of “Take Your Time,” though quite naturally he takes his sweet time getting there. But it’s well worth it, and is probably the biggest example on how Spaceman fucks with his source material for the live album.

Certain Songs #2422: Spiritualized – “Walkin’ With Jesus (Royal Albert Hall Oct 10, 1997)”

August 16, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Year: 1998

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Welp. Remember how, a few days ago, I wrote how I could never find a way into Spacemen 3? I guess I was wrong, because not only does “Walkin’ With Jesus” date back their earliest recording sessions, they apparently recorded it more than once, as digging through YouTube to research this point I discovered slow dreamy versions and noisy electric versions.

And yet, I will swear on a thousand drug-smuggled bibles that until that research, this version from the Royal Albert Hall concert was the only one I ever heard. Because I’m utterly positive that had I heard any the Spacemen 3 versions back in the 1980s, I would have totally and utterly flipped for it. So I guess when I tried Spacemen 3, I didn’t try something with this song on it, but I’m clearly an unreliable narrator. Or maybe I’m just fucked up on the sound of confusion.

Certain Songs #2421: Spiritualized – “Medication (Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997)”

August 15, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997
Year: 1998

. . .

One of the highlights of the titanic Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 album was “Medication,” which had been the opening track on Pure Phase, but because I first heard it on the live album, that’s the version that I love the most.

Either way, “Medication” is a textbook class in quiet/LOUD/quiet, drifting on on the shimmering connective tissue of Thighpaulsandra’s shimmering keyboards, over which J Spaceman sings about drugs. If you can believe that.

Certain Songs #2420: Spiritualized – “Electric Mainline (Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997)”

August 14, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Royal Albert Hall, Oct 10, 1997
Year: 1998

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I’ve only ever seen Spiritualized one time, on April 2, 1998 at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco. All things considered it was a pretty good time to see them, as they were touring Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. And sure, while they were the opening band and only got an hour, they were the opening band for Radiohead on the OK Computer tour, and half of the eight songs they played are songs I’m writing about.

It was also a preview of one of my favorite albums of 1998, and the greatest live album of the decade, give or take Nirvana’s Unplugged album: Royal Albert Hall, October 10, 1997

Certain Songs #2419: Spiritualized – “Electricity”

August 12, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Year: 1997

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So far, I’ve been writing about the slower — or at best, mid-tempo — Spiritualized songs. And for good reason: on their first two albums, that was all they really had.

That all changed with “Electricity,” an absolutely crazed raver that sits smack dab in the middle of Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space , guaranteed to wake up anybody who might have started drifting away on the drugs the album packaging invited you to take.

Certain Songs #2418: Spiritualized – “I Think I’m In Love”

August 11, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Year: 1997

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This is where I came in. I’m pretty that while I’d heard Spacemen 3 at some point in the 80s, Spiritualized didn’t really cross my radar until the massive critical acclaim for Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space was so overwhelming, I needed to check it out.

And while I would fall short of calling it a masterpiece, it’s where Jason Pierce well and truly added the gospel that had been lurking around the edges of the first two records, a psychedelic gospel rock stew that could be utterly transcendent, like on the too-short-at-8:10 “I Think I’m In Love,” a gorgeous roar of a fucked up song.

Certain Songs #2417: Spiritualized – “Lay Back in the Sun”

August 10, 2022 by Jim Connelly

Album: Pure Phase
Year: 1995

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It will probably surprise no one that Spiritualized’s second album, 1995’s Pure Phase, wasn’t so different from their debut, 1992’s Lazer Guided Melodies, with the possible exception that the songs had maybe a little more organ and a little less synth.

Whether or not it was better or worse is hard to say, though it did have a couple of songs that I guess would be considered classics, the opening track, “Medication,” which bounced from near silence to roaring noise, and “Electric Mainline” which was an instrumental that built and built to no real resolution. I’ll deal with both of those songs when we get to the live album in a few days, but Pierce was so taken with “Electric Mainline” that he temporarily renamed the band Spiritualized Electric Mainline for this album.