This is quite simply a ground breaking piece of work. Set a touch of jazz down alongside grungy guitar feedback. Take the spirit and raw energy of punk and marry it to the sound of black gospel choirs. What about using the vocals of the choirs as your groove base. Add big string orchestra. It is almost like post modern pre apocalypse Beach Boys but surfing the waves of the cosmos as opposed to California's golden sands. Spiritualized are pushing the envelope and redefining the possibilities and making it sound like one big musical stew of gorgeous and lush, lush beauty. After saying all that it seems more focused than their previous albums, less spacey and more accessible. In the Christian world in recent years, many have said that Delirious? were pushing worship music to its limit, exploring new territories. Well our Littlehampton boys need to go back to the lab because they are not even on the same planet.
The subject matter is what brings in such comparisons. Spiritualized are well named. This album is drenched in the terrain of the soul. On the opening "On Fire," Jason Pierce is calling on God to come down with the fervor of a prophet of Baal, "C'mon my lord/C'mon my child/Let heaven flow/Into your soul/Let it come on down/Ease away pain/And you won't feel/That way again." The closer could be Elijah's more restrained prayer in that Mount Carmel battle. In Lord Can You Hear Me he is asking what every Revival tent preacher has ever wanted to have their sinners contemplating on the way home, "Lord, help me out/I'd take my life but I'm in doubt/Just where my soul will lie/Deep in the earth or way up in the sky." In between he races between reaching for redemption and wallowing in his own drug and drink induced hell wondering whether he has any chance of heaven and pretty sure that the straight and narrow is just too much of those two things to give his darkest side a hope.
The "it" in "Let It Come Down" could be salvation or judgement. It is the pin ball game of darkness and light and in this case though some places will remain a little obscure, on the whole the bright and beautiful are the glorious victors. Programme your CD player to "Repeat."
Similar sounding releases
1998Bernard ButlerPeople Move On
1998R.E.M.Up
2002The Gloria RecordStart Here
1997Delirious?King Of Fools
2005World Leader PretendPunches
1995Eric MatthewsIt's Heavy in Here
