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Too
Much Of A Good Thing
Spiritualized
Vicar St.
Dublin 9th September 2003.
Jason Pierce fancies himself as a bit of an auteur. Spiritualized, the
band he formed after the break-up of cult 80's outfit Spacemen 3 has long
since ceased to be a group. They are now the flag of convenience for Pierce
and whatever crew of musicians he happens to be hiring. For a Spiritualized
musician, there is little job security (the sack can come at any moment)
and not a whole lot of room for self-expression. Jason tells you what
to play, down to last note, and you damn well had better play it. Though
hardly the best boss in the world, Pierce is a truly dedicated artist.
Brass sections, string quartets and flautists are drafted in to help achieve
the sound that he wants, and sod the expense. He once changed his name
by deed poll to Jason Spaceman. Second album Pure Phase, the last to feature
Kate Radley, his former girlfriend and the current Mrs. Richard Ashcroft,
came resplendent in a glow in the dark sleeve so expensive that Pierce
ended up losing money on the enterprise. Perhaps as a result of this loss,
the rest of the band, Kate and all, were dismissed, unpaid for their efforts.
Since then Spiritualized have entered a realm all of Pierce's own, where
the music is often stunning, but often lacking in focus.
As a result, there are few more frustrating experiences for the devoted
fan than seeing Spiritualized play live. For a time, around 1998, they
were felt by many to be the greatest band on earth, the only contemporary
musicians to fully realize the possibilities of the medium in which they
worked. Those who have heard and admired only their studio albums can
but guess at the power and the glory of Spiritualized at full throttle.
Starting each song slowly and quietly, as if laying out the ground rules
- "this is what this song sounds like, when played normally" - they then
take it incrementally higher and higher, until it is a frenzy of deafening
noise, wave upon wave of rhythm crashing down until you feel as if the
entire venue is about to lift off the earth and zoom off into who knows
where. And yet all the time, the cacophony, because you have been so gently
and lovingly led into it, sounds not chaotic, but intensely beautiful.
This is what Spiritualized do, and nobody does it better. Pierce knows
his strengths and plays to them. His musical bag of tricks is in fact
laughably limited, but so wonderfully does he use it that one is willing
to treat criticisms of limited range as mere quibbles. What is frustrating
is that when an artist has made the decision to stick with the same few
ideas and take them further and further, to go for depth instead of breath,
things will sooner or later run out of steam. For every song that drives
the audience into a blissful frenzy, there come those that leave us cold,
and not a little bored. And over the years, those moments of boredom have
become disturbingly frequent.
Tonight is the release date of the new album, Amazing Grace, touted as
a return to roots, inspired by The White Stripes' back to basics ethic.
On the face of it, this sounds like a good idea, following 2001's Let
It Come Down, which despite its abundant beauty, was a little grandiose
and overblown. There are only so many times one can deploy an orchestra
and full gospel choir before it starts sounding like a bit too much.
Pierce's preciousness about his work is legendary, and means that tonight
is not a rock gig but a performance, identical, song for song, to last
night's and tomorrow's. Pierce sits on a stool at the side of the stage
throughout, the better to keep an eye on and occasionally direct his current
hired help. As always, not a word is spoken all night, leading myself
and my accompanying friend to amuse ourselves between songs by saying
things like "Everyone having a good time out there?" and "We've played
in a lot of cities, but no-one knows how to rock like Dublin!" Well, we
thought it was funny.
Things start well, with a new song, called I think Never Going Back, very
much in the vein of Come Together, one of the more rocking tracks on the
third album, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. Another, slower
song follows, also well received, before a harmonica-assisted version
of Spacemen 3 standard Walking With Jesus. The latter is plaintive and
soulful and fully deserves its roof-raising reception. Then we get Come
Together, and my fears that Pierce may have reached the end of a road
begin to materialise. While it is rude for an audience to talk loudly
at a concert, as if the band were merely providing backing music to a
night out, it is also an undeniable comment on the performance. The new
songs are not bad, but we have, so to speak, heard them all before. Perhaps
the most worrying moments of the evening were the two occasions when the
opening seconds of songs were greeted with roars of approval by fans who
recognised the intros to old favourites. Then the sudden, embarrassed
silence when Jason began to sing and we realised that these were not old
favourites but new songs which just sounded like them. Worse, there is
a soundalike of I'm On Fire, the first track on Let It Come Down, which
was utterly anonymous the first time around.
Things do pick up a little in the second half of the show, when we hear
some fresher-sounding songs, and the musicians show why Pierce deemed
them worthy of accompanying him. Keyboards, tubular bells and xylophone
provide embellishments, the bass is heavy and throbbing, and the combination
of three guitars means that the sound roars off the stage. Normally, we
ask nothing more nor less from a drummer than that he not be out of time,
but for much of tonight, of the two men seated on stools, it was the percussionist
who stole the show. Immensely powerful and relentlessly inventive, he
did remarkable things without breaking a sweat. Breaking a sweat is not
part of the Spaceman creed, but in a small sop to showbiz, we got a couple
more glimpses of what George Clinton, undoubtedly with Spiritualized in
mind, called The Awesome Power of a Fully Functioning Mothership. Take
Good Care Of It, an unassuming track from first album Laser Guided Melodies
turned live stalwart, is given a thorough thrashing, providing the highlight
of the evening. This is followed by Smiles from the same album, which
also reaches a deeply satisfying crescendo. Unfortunately, I would have
enjoyed it a lot more, had I not had to clamp my eyes tight shut to block
out the overdone strobe lights. Then it's over, band troop off in silence,
house lights go up. We'll get no encore, for the performance is complete.
As we leave the venue, I reflect on how the strobes marred my enjoyment
of Smiles. This is typical Pierce, doing great things, but never knowing
when enough is enough, always succumbing to the tendency to put a little
too much icing on the cake. Still, I'll buy the new album, for the same
reason as I will surely attend my next Spiritualized gig: when he gets
it right, he gets it righter than anyone else there is.
by
Fergal Crehan
26th September 2003
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