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Album Review
by Droog Doe
15-9-2001
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| Spiritualized |
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Spiritualized: 'Let's Come Down'
(Arista/BMG)
Jason Pierce’s band-of-one takes years to come up with his Wagnerian pop
Jason Pierce, the principal – and from this album – sole member of Spiritualized has done it again, alike all along his career. Make an album that is as indivudalistic and against the grain of the required music fabric right now, as ever. ‘Let’s Come Down’ supplants the million-selling ‘Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space’ of four years ago and it continues its usual theme.
What has changed in meantime is that Pierce had a dispute with the other members (who went to form mildly-interesting Lupine Howl, their debut album was released on Beggars Banquet few months back) leaving him to take the creative reigns in his hands. That is often not a very good thing because no one (managers, assistants, employees are usually a bunch of yes-people) is there to question, debate, argue the quality of songs and try to push it up.
‘Let’s Come Down’ is an ambitious orchestral pop-cum-psychedelia musical journey of 11 cuts that doesn’t always flow as one would expect it. There are moments when it feels too laboured and parts are over-colossal; the probable malady of this record is too much studio time resulting in spontaneity being lost in the process; too much thinking and analysing in a studio is detrimental to creativity.
‘On Fire’ starts it on a basic rocking mode but it soon turns into a mish-mash of sonic ingredients that are derivative in extremis: ‘Do It All Over Again’ sounds like a reverb-country-rocker with strings that gets rightly tedious on ‘Out Of Sight’. A glimmer of quality occurs at the final (original) track, a 10-minute epic ‘Won’t Get To Heaven (The State I’m In)’ that is undermined with inclusion of (his original band) Spacemen 3’s version of ‘Lord Can You Hear Me’.
Imagine Wagner mixed with Phil Spector and Brian Wilson with additional elegance you might associate with Scott Walker (mighty crooner-turned-producer of Pulp’s new album) and you can almost visualise the aural picture. In a soundbite, still lost in stratosphere.
7/10
Droog Doe
15-9-2001
Spiritualized's 'Let It Come Down' is released 17 September 2001 on Arista/BMG
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