Things were very different in early 1995 when Spiritualized’s magnificent second album Pure Phase came out at the height of Britpop, reaching number 20 in the charts. But as Jason Pierce shows this evening, not much has changed in his world. Seven albums and 30 years later, J Spaceman’s vision remains essentially the same as he channels the heavy cosmic blues and raw Americana that has come to define the Spiritualized sound through a 15-piece ensemble for this special anniversary performance.
This is the band’s second night at the Barbican as part of a run of shows this year celebrating Pure Phase, the Spiritualized album that tends to get overlooked in favour of its follow-up Ladies And Gentleman We Are Floating In Space, but which many fans consider to be the perfect distillation of Pierce’s musical genius.
It moved the band on from their more delicate debut Lazer Guided Melodies by bringing in some of Pierce’s most immediate pop songs – “Medication”, “Lay Back In The Sun” – and introducing the soulful gospel tropes he’d explore in rich detail later on, while retaining the electronic tones and harmonious drones that always suggested he was tuned to a celestial frequency only he could hear – a result of his fastidious production and mixing methods.
Pure Phase also gave the band some personality and helped to solidify their approach. Back then, Pierce played up to his spaced-out image by wearing an astronaut suit and posing vacantly for press shots in a T-shirt with the slogan “Drugs Not Jobs”, arm in arm with his partner at the time, Kate Radley.
This evening, Pierce is the only person on stage not wearing black as he stands to the right in a pale shirt, shades and silver trainers with his band arranged in a semi-circle around the stage, leaving a large empty space in the centre. The eye lands on the rhythm section anchored in the middle, Starsailor’s James Stelfox on bass and long-time Spiritualized drummer Kevin Bales. Above them, a huge moon is projected on the backdrop – maybe we will be floating in space? – and the room is bathed in swirling green light, reflecting the colour of the Pure Phase reissue in 2021.
You usually know what you’re getting with a Spiritualized show, but this evening you really do because Pure Phase is played in sequence. Pierce’s regular five-piece band is joined by strings, brass and four backing singers, which allows him to deliver maximalist versions of each song, perhaps presenting Pure Phase in its entirety for the first time in the way he’d always imagined it (budget permitting).
Somehow Pierce turns 60 this year, and for all the garlands tossed at his most recent album Everything Was Beautiful, he has effectively been writing versions of “Medication” for the last 30 years. “Every night I stay up late and make my state more desperate,” he sings, slightly crumpled, on this transcendent junkie prayer that opens the show, but by the end he’s come alive as the brass rings out: “Makes me feel so good – leaves me fucked up inside!” This leads into the sweeter “The Slide Song” and gentler “All Of My Tears” before the audience is vaporised by the pulsating sax-and-strobe overload of “These Blues”.
Everything that makes Spiritualized such a compelling live experience is contained in Pure Phase – even the sinuous electronic passages seem to glow as if beamed in from another dimension. And yet the 20-minute encore of “Cop Shoot Cop”, that deep-fried acid-rock gospel trip from Ladies And Gentleman…, immediately illustrates the leap Pierce took for his next album. That one turns 30 in two years – start queuing for tickets now.
SET LIST
1 Medication
2 The Slide Song
3 Electric Phase
4 All Of My Tears
5 These Blues
6 Let It Flow
7 Take Good Care Of It
8 Born, Never Asked
9 Electric Mainline
10 Lay Back In The Sun
11 Good Times
12 Pure Phase
13 Spread Your Wings
14 Feel Like Goin’ Home
ENCORE
15 Cop Shoot Cop
