Spiritualized

When "Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" hits record store shelves in 1997, Jason Pierce is already a thoroughbred of the British independent circuit. While the previous decade had seen him elevate the "sound of confusion" to an art form alongside his toxic twin Pete Kember, the fraught relationship between the two would eventually push him to scrap the Spacemen 3 project and strike out on his own (under the moniker Spiritualized) to give full vent to the cosmic-religious fervour that had already permeated the band's final works, cementing "Ladies And Gentlemen" first and foremost as the definitive fulfilment of a far-sighted artistic journey.

There would be plenty of angles from which to begin analysing what lies behind the masterpiece under examination here, but none of them would prove as telling as a private affair which, occurring two years before the album's release, would brand it indelibly.

It so happened that, with Spiritualized riding high on the release of "Pure Phase" and set to support Verve on their English tour in '95, the band's then-keyboardist and Pierce's girlfriend, Kate Radley, had decided to secretly marry Richard Ashcroft.

As many times as Jason Pierce has stated that "Ladies And Gentlemen" has nothing to do with Kate Radley, and as unfair as it would be to reduce the complexity of a work of such beauty to a gossip story, hearing the record open with her voice coldly pronouncing its title cannot leave one unmoved.

And that's nothing compared to the title track, which subsequently takes shape in fade in, answering Radley with one of the most poignant and unforgettable melodies of the late decade. Pierce pours his entire self into a hallucinated gospel that embraces and wounds at the same time. The vocal lines of verse and chorus overlap in a mantra where the disarming simplicity of the lyrics ("All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away") and the understated singing sound like the most credible of confessions. The essential elements of a work that will unfold over seventy hypnotic minutes are already here.

From the very start, one encounters an overflowing sonic richness, with Pierce drawing liberally on his main influences to shed light on an assemblage game that transcends mere quotation, sounding classic yet unprecedented in the sensitivity with which it shuffles the deck. Thanks to the contribution of some twenty musicians, including a horn section and a string quartet, the entire London Community Gospel Choir, and no fewer than fourteen producers, arrangers and sound engineers (among them the great John Leckie), every song has the ability to fit neatly into a given musical genre while simultaneously being its nemesis, betraying, beneath an apparent grandeur, a seductive, precarious balance.

It's therefore hard to pin down exactly what "Ladies And Gentlemen" is, musically speaking. Perhaps it's the harmonica blues of "I Think I'm In Love"; or the gospel backing vocals in the lullaby "Cool Waves" and the unstoppable fury of "Come Together"; but it's also the ghost of Velvet Underground gone soul on "Stay With Me", or the Stooges shot into orbit with Red Crayola on "Electricity".

All of this is steeped in searing noise explosions, grandiloquent orchestral arrangements (special mention for the touching cinematic crescendo of "Broken Heart") and horn sections redolent of New Orleans (the city also represented by Dr. John, who lends piano and taste to the endless trance of "Cop Shoot Cop"), while a Beatlesque care for melody naturally serves as the thread that ties it all together.

The true key to the album's appeal lies precisely in its ambiguity, not only in the multifaceted music but also in lyrics dripping with a sense of dependency, which certainly stems from lost love ("Don't know what to do by myself/ 'cause all of my time was with you"), but which seems to go even further, portraying the dramatic consequences of the end of any seemingly unbreakable bond.

It's almost unnecessary to add that further ambiguity comes from the fact that the theme of dependency also fits neatly with the chemical pleasures Pierce is known to indulge in, which crop up here too as a reference in the witty cover art, whose graphics evoke a medicine box, with the album ironically described in the booklet as "a tablet used to treat the heart and and soul".

It goes without saying that, although the tormented relationship with Radley and Pierce's less-than-rigorous lifestyle are key to understanding some of the material, like every great masterpiece worth its salt "Ladies And Gentlemen" goes well beyond its creator's personal outpouring: its elusiveness, oscillating between the visceral quality of African-American music and the detachment of "cosmic inclinations", ultimately expresses, above all else, humanity's necessary yearning for the absolute, identifiable in whatever expressive form can fill the voids of existence (religion understood in its etymological sense as "bond" in "No God, Only Religion").

The miraculous fruit of an extremely methodical studio process, yet one capable of unleashing primal sensations on listening, "Ladies And Gentlemen" is the last great classic of the much-discussed 90s Britrock phenomenon precisely because, rather than simply riding the wave, it looks down on it from the heights of its own unreachable nebula. The same nebula that still shines today, without having lost a single spark of its beauty, even after lavish reissues and triumphant live revivals.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

11/11/2012