Spiritualized - And Nothing Hurt

Tiny Mix Tapes 90

Spiritualized
And Nothing Hurt

[Fat Possum/Bella Union; 2018]

Rating: 4.5/5

“More than one person has said I’ve been writing the same song all my life,” Jason Pierce recently told The New York Times. Though proffered as self-criticism, this remark serves more as a testament to the astonishing consistency of Pierce’s songwriting through Spiritualized’s nearly 30-year run. Since 1990, there have been only two constants in the band’s universe: Pierce has always been at its center, and every album they have released has been excellent.

Spiritualized’s lineup is notoriously unstable — it has featured a rotating cast of nearly 20 members in total, not counting session musicians — but And Nothing Hurts is the first album that Pierce recorded solo. Citing money problems, he recorded the majority of it in his bedroom on his laptop. Chasing a studio sound similar to classic Columbia and Capitol albums, Pierce strummed along to classical records, locating and sampling string sounds chord by chord until he could build the tracks himself. Only later did he hire session musicians to play the instruments he couldn’t play or sample. The process drove him nearly to despair — he stated multiple times during the recording that this would be the final Spiritualized album.

Not that you would know any of this by listening. And Nothing Hurts is a big album, grandly ambitious and sonically expansive. The riotous climaxes of “On the Sunshine” and “The Morning After” do nothing to belie their bedroom-pop origins; meanwhile, more subdued tracks like “Perfect Miracle” and “Sail On Through” benefit from the intimate atmosphere in which they were recorded. Pierce can somehow have it both ways, summoning the panoramic scope appropriate to his outer-space motif and then reducing the scale back down to that of an intimate conversation.

The key to this trick is his voice. Pierce’s voice includes in it all the heartbreak and resignation of a lifetime, though he’s only 53. On previous albums, there was a ready cause for his distressed croon: breaking up his previous band (Lazer Guided Melodies), drug abuse and a difficult breakup (Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space), almost dying (Songs in A&E), almost dying again (Sweet Heart Sweet Light). This time around, it seems as though the sheer effort put into the album, and perhaps the sheer effort necessary to be an artist in 2018, has inflected his performance. “Though I’m tired just sitting here singing for you / There’s better things, you know, a lonely rock and roller can do,” he sings on “Let’s Dance.” One can imagine him pondering the end of Spiritualized, alone in his apartment, singing such lines.

Pierce’s repeated claims that this would be his final album, paired with the recent retrospective tour in commemoration of Ladies and Gentlemen’s 20th anniversary, makes this seem like an apposite occasion to reflect on Spiritualized’s tenure. In its various incarnations, the band has celebrated the history of rock & roll while pushing insistently at its limits. You know just where you are when you put on a Spiritualized album, though you don’t know where you’ll end up. And Nothing Hurt would make a fitting cap on their career, encapsulating as it does so many of the band’s hallmarks. And yet, Pierce has begun to change his tune, noting that the sessions produced a few additional tracks that he can’t see not releasing in the future.

Of course, Pierce has been writing the same song his whole life — it’s a damn good song. Let’s hope to hear more of it.

Mon Sep 10 04:03:44 GMT 2018

Tiny Mix Tapes 90

Spiritualized
And Nothing Hurt

[Fat Possum/Bella Union; 2018]

Rating: 4.5/5

“More than one person has said I’ve been writing the same song all my life,” Jason Pierce recently told The New York Times. Though proffered as self-criticism, this remark serves more as a testament to the astonishing consistency of Pierce’s songwriting through Spiritualized’s nearly 30-year run. Since 1990, there have been only two constants in the band’s universe: Pierce has always been at its center, and every album they have released has been excellent.

Spiritualized’s lineup is notoriously unstable — it has featured a rotating cast of nearly 20 members in total, not counting session musicians — but And Nothing Hurts is the first album that Pierce recorded solo. Citing money problems, he recorded the majority of it in his bedroom on his laptop. Chasing a studio sound similar to classic Columbia and Capitol albums, Pierce strummed along to classical records, locating and sampling string sounds chord by chord until he could build the tracks himself. Only later did he hire session musicians to play the instruments he couldn’t play or sample. The process drove him nearly to despair — he stated multiple times during the recording that this would be the final Spiritualized album.

Not that you would know any of this by listening. And Nothing Hurts is a big album, grandly ambitious and sonically expansive. The riotous climaxes of “On the Sunshine” and “The Morning After” do nothing to belie their bedroom-pop origins; meanwhile, more subdued tracks like “Perfect Miracle” and “Sail On Through” benefit from the intimate atmosphere in which they were recorded. Pierce can somehow have it both ways, summoning the panoramic scope appropriate to his outer-space motif and then reducing the scale back down to that of an intimate conversation.

The key to this trick is his voice. Pierce’s voice includes in it all the heartbreak and resignation of a lifetime, though he’s only 53. On previous albums, there was a ready cause for his distressed croon: breaking up his previous band (Lazer Guided Melodies), drug abuse and a difficult breakup (Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space), almost dying (Songs in A&E), almost dying again (Sweet Heart Sweet Light). This time around, it seems as though the sheer effort put into the album, and perhaps the sheer effort necessary to be an artist in 2018, has inflected his performance. “Though I’m tired just sitting here singing for you / There’s better things, you know, a lonely rock and roller can do,” he sings on “Let’s Dance.” One can imagine him pondering the end of Spiritualized, alone in his apartment, singing such lines.

Pierce’s repeated claims that this would be his final album, paired with the recent retrospective tour in commemoration of Ladies and Gentlemen’s 20th anniversary, makes this seem like an apposite occasion to reflect on Spiritualized’s tenure. In its various incarnations, the band has celebrated the history of rock & roll while pushing insistently at its limits. You know just where you are when you put on a Spiritualized album, though you don’t know where you’ll end up. And Nothing Hurt would make a fitting cap on their career, encapsulating as it does so many of the band’s hallmarks. And yet, Pierce has begun to change his tune, noting that the sessions produced a few additional tracks that he can’t see not releasing in the future.

Of course, Pierce has been writing the same song his whole life — it’s a damn good song. Let’s hope to hear more of it.

Mon Sep 10 04:03:44 GMT 2018

Drowned In Sound 80

Imagine a world where Keith muscled his way past Mick to helm the Stones and somehow had Jimmy Webb for a songwriter partner. Ta-dah! You’ve got Spiritualized. Except these days Spiritualized consists of just Jason Pierce painstakingly assembling this music on his own, in the spare room of his East London home. The humble location has no bearing on the music he makes, however and is as wide screen and cinematic as Pet Sounds, except, unlike Brian Wilson, he’s landlocked and the noise of the occasional ambulance going by sometimes seeps into the songs.

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It might not have worked out this way. Mr Pierce’s self-medicated ’indulgences’ could have set him on a path to a medical facility of some sort - after all, his previous band, Spacemen 3 recorded albums with snappy tiles like Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To. Fortunately for us, he was clear headed enough to piece together what is undoubtably one of the finest albums of 2018.

If you’re familiar with Spiritualized, you’ll have a rough idea of the terrain And Nothing Hurt inhabits. Gospel choirs and orchestral instruments rub up against filthy electric guitars, topped off with Pierce’s low-key drawl. And rest assured that the quality control is as high as ever. It might be six years since the last album, but it was worth the wait.

Pierce has described And Nothing Hurt as ‘like a field recording that’s made by Phil Spector’, which is pretty accurate. At the core, the songs are pretty simple, but they’re embellished superbly. ‘A Perfect Miracle’ is a gentle, lilting country ballad, but swelling strings and massed vocals lift the piece to another level altogether. And that’s just the first track. ‘I’m Your Man’ (no, not a Wham! or Leonard Cohen cover) has a lovely, narcotic “Exile on Main Street Feel” and once again, the arrangement is gorgeous, underpinned by an unfussy, bluesy guitar line. It builds and falls in a very agreeable fashion. ‘Here It Comes (The Road) Let's Go’ keeps that mood in place but with a little bit of glitchy weirdness thrown in, just to keep the listener on their toes. If the album had finished there and then, it would have been worth the Spotify subscription, but it keeps on going…

When Pierce cranks up the tempo, he’s just as convincing. There is a brace of rockers on And Nothing Hurt which would get even the most hardcore of wallflowers shaking a tailfeather. ‘On the Sunshine’ and especially ‘The Morning After’ with its churning rhythm and off kilter brass and guitar parts are highlights of a record that’s peppered with good things. The latter track weighs in at 7.42, but it’s gone in a flash.

If you’re looking for the secret to life, the universe and everything else in the lyrics, you’ll come up empty, I’m afraid. Words are kept simple - “Hold my hand awhile, we’ll go out in style” from ‘Let’s Dance’ is a case in point. The good thing is, they dovetail perfectly with the music and Pierce’s delivery makes the words sound ragged and soulful. He does throw in the occasional gem like “Quell the cavalier child” from ‘Damaged’ every now and then.

The album finishes with “Sail on Through” – a luscious, dreamy piece with everything including the kitchen sink and a few lines of Morse code thrown into it. When its extended coda curls to a stop, the listener is left exhausted and satisfied. Are Spiritualized fans the kind of people who wave their lighters in the air at gigs? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

Pierce is lucky to be in any condition to be making music at all, following a bout of double pneumonia as well as liver disease, which may explain why the album has a certain analgesic quality to it - a calming, hypnotic balm to relieve physical pain. And Nothing Hurt indeed. If it wasn’t for the addition of the two up-tempo tunes, this would be the aural equivalent of having a warm bath whilst on a morphine drip. Or a bucketful of really nice ice cream. ‘I think it’s a very optimistic record, or quietly optimistic. That was the intention’, says Pierce and in this rather unsteady world we live in, we all need optimism. I’m not sure I want to hear many more records consisting of angry pop musicians shouting about how terrible everything is. Those people need to relax a bit and turn off the lights, get comfy and dive in to And Nothing Hurt. You should too. But don’t make any plans, as you’ll be in no condition to do anything for quite a while.

![105802](http://dis.resized.images.s3.amazonaws.com/540x310/105802.jpeg)

Wed Sep 05 13:52:00 GMT 2018

The Guardian 80

(Bella Union)

The duality of Jason Pierce is the subject of I’m Your Man, the second track on the eighth Spiritualized album. “I could be faithful, honest and true … dependable all down the line,” Pierce sings in his fragile quaver. “But if you want wasted, loaded, permanently folded … I’m your man.”

Spiritualized are the bit that is dependable all down the line, making music that manages to be both hazy and focused, a daydream of gospel, rock’n’roll, country and psychedelia with an appeal that is at least in part dependent on an image of their leader as wasted, loaded and permanently folded. It may be more than 30 years since, as part of Spacemen 3, he claimed to be “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”, but that’s still the essential perception of Pierce.

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Fri Sep 07 08:00:34 GMT 2018

Pitchfork 77

On what may or may not be the final album from his legendary space-rock project, Jason Pierce finally sounds as though he has a hold on his passions, preoccupations, and demons.

Tue Sep 11 05:00:00 GMT 2018