Spiritualized
Live At Albert Hall
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Spiritualized
Live At Albert Hall
Dedicated/Arista, 1998
RiYL: Spacemen 3, The Verve's A Storm In Heaven, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, Pink |
It's a sentiment that could apply to all the English band's music, always a fine soundtrack for the hallucinogenic journey of your choice. But on the 15-track, nearly 100-minute Live, Pierce and his gaggle of backing musicians (including a gospel choir and orchestra) do a fine job of balancing the music's more free-form, trippy moments with beautifully simple psych-rock.
The dichotomy is apparent from note one, as a soft gospel hymn explodes into a structureless fireball of noise. "Shine A Light" explores Spiritualized's modus operandi par excellence: introduce a simple melodic theme and then jam it out for as many minutes as desired. In another band's hands, an essentially one-chord instrumental like "Electric Mainline" would seem ludicrous. But Spiritualized knows how to titillate like the best, heightening listeners' anticipations with gradually accelerating tempos and subtle keyboard and horn licks to bolster the libido... er, bottom end.
Songs from the band's acclaimed 1997 Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space make up the bulk of Live, and many benefit from the presence of additional instrumentation. On first listen, "I Think I'm In Love" seems to suffer greatly from Pierce's leaden vocal delivery and a hefty 10-minute running time. But this seductive version actually eclipses its studio counterpart's pleasure meter reading, floating upward with swaying rhythms, slide guitar and angelic backing vocals. Other standouts include an abrasive take on "Come Together" and the stirring rock gospel "Oh Happy Day," which closes the album with life-affirming jubilation.
Live does lose a bit of its luster on some of the over-produced bits. The new-age nod "Broken Heart" sounds like something out of "Joseph And The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," while the 16-minute "Cop Shoot Cop" trips up during a long white noise burst before regaining footing on a dubby outtro. Even though these numbers don't come off entirely well, Pierce deserves credit for his Floydian sense of grandeur. Indeed, like Pink Floyd's The Wall, Live has a strong sense of ebb and flow, allowing for songs to fade into the background before roaring back with rock vigor.
Spiritualized creates affecting music without conventional verse-chorus song structures, and Live At Albert Hall stands as one of the few live albums where the mood envoked is often more enjoyable than the music itself.
JONATHAN COHEN | Jonathan Cohen co-created Nude As The News with his Indiana University mates Troy Carpenter and Ben French. When not traversing the globe for business and pleasure, he holds down the fort as a senior editor for Billboard in New York. Stop him and he just may ask, "what for lunch?"