Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

Hope J. spends as much time editing as he does mixing this.

Also: Huh?

Wonder if Jason ever heard this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6oqgS35_2w

I'm sure he did

cover:
http://cdn2.pitchfork.com/news/45536/9680614a.jpg
out via Fat Possum in the U.S. on April 17 and Double Six on April 16.

Did Peter Saville's secretary design this album cover too?

pretty good sez I

What. A. Jam.

Had a long long drive in the sun yesterday, wish I had been able to play this song on repeat. Awesome.

As much as I love Spiritualized (a lot), the sound of 20 musicians breaking down and playing whatever, the [insert noise here] moments, they are the musical equivalent of stock footage. Great song though

I can't hear any [insert noise here] stock moments in the new song, although I know what you mean.

This is streaming on NPR. Very excited to give it a listen, I love Hey Jane.

thought the cover art was an img loading error :(

Last couple of albums were a big letdown for me, don't like his new "raw" sound at all. Probably won't be checking this new one out unless it is supposed to be a major improvement.

first sound on this is ornate strings, moodles

also songs in a&e wasn't raw at all, i think

oh haha this is really great

the refined songwriting of let it come down meets the jazz freakout nature of the live show, finally

This is a really good album. It's probably most similar to Let It Come Down especially with the use of strings but unlike that album it doesn't seem to drag as much. Hey Jane is easily the best thing on here but I enjoyed just about every song. I liked the last album but this one just feels so much more focused. I wasn't really paying much attention to the lyrics but that's not really why I listen to this band.

It's a similar situation to the latest Tindersticks album, no massive surprises just a really strong album that's probably their best in over a decade. Reminds me of why I fell for them in the first place.

can't wait for this.
been on a massive spiritualized trip of late.
despite it not doing anything different to the formula i loved 'hey jane'
just hope there is a standard jewel case version of the album as opposed to the usual packaging gubbins that jason likes to mess up.
[though i did like the glow in the dark version of pure phase]

NPR stream

this sounds pretty great

whoa, the video for this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U_EqgBWnmc

def on some Let It Come Down arrangements-tip here

def also way better than the last two

fuck this is REALLY good

the video is proper 0_O
i just hope the album has the complete 10 min version.
honest

bleah, fuck that video

cool song though

i mean, i kind of like it in some ways (the vid), but did not need that massive dose of brutality and negativity atm

this sounds really unpolished to me on the first listen. If he spent a year mixing it, I don't know what the hell he did. Things like Little Girl don't sound cohesive at all.

This is a really good album. It's probably most similar to Let It Come Down especially with the use of strings but unlike that album it doesn't seem to drag as much. Hey Jane is easily the best thing on here but I enjoyed just about every song. I liked the last album but this one just feels so much more focused. I wasn't really paying much attention to the lyrics but that's not really why I listen to this band.

It's a similar situation to the latest Tindersticks album, no massive surprises just a really strong album that's probably their best in over a decade. Reminds me of why I fell for them in the first place.

― Kitchen Person, Monday, April 9, 2012 4:43 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm in every respect!

hypehat, re: mixing -- i think he made some interesting and kinda bold mixing choices; i'd give it another chance. like how low in the mix the drums are on Get What You Deserve. also, i'm assuming you've only listened to a stream and/or webrip, so that could be the source of some of your sound quality woes.

as far as the video goes, it's the best i've seen all year. it's images have affected the way i hear the entire album. and not just their brutality, but the way they juxtapose misery with the music's ecstasy -- an ideal J has been pursuing for his whole career, imo. and i'd say that's pretty much what a successful video is supposed to do.

so happy the mood is positive about this record and i love Let It Come Down so this is a win-win.

can't wait to hear this.

It sounds a little better off headphones, granted, and I've got the vinyl coming some time this week so I'll wait til that before saying too much. And some of it does sound wonderful, like Life Is A Problem and Hey Jane (Greatest thing he's done in years), but I guess I was a little bit spoiled by seeing it at the Albert Hall - I think I was expecting the same massive sweep that he got at that show, and he's clearly not going for that here all the time. It's much more intimate, even to a fault, than Let It Come Down or maybe even A&E - his vocals are really the centrepoint. It's like the closet mix of The Velvets' S/T or something.

he put his vocals way up front on Amazing Grace and A&E too but it works better here. songs are stronger, I think.

also I know next-to-nobody gives any credence to his lyrics but he gets some funny zingers off on this one imho

i think the triteness of his lyrics is actually one of the band's many great qualities. it's like every rock n roll cliche boiled down to it's purest essence.

its*

Whilst that video wouldn't be my first choice for promotional material, I think this is ridiculous. 'Pain porn for white boys'?!
http://www.collapseboard.com/reviews/albums-reviews/spiritualized-sweet-heart-sweet-light-fat-possum/

I really disliked Hey Jane when I heard it, maybe it sounds better in some context other than the radio but it just felt clunky. Then again I've never particularly liked Spiritualized rockers.

I don’t give a shit about notions of authenticity.

hmm rest of the piece indicates otherwise

But if a middle-aged white man from Rugby, trailing his privilege and his money and his production vales behind him like old school ties, appropriates the experience and style and musical tropes of the vulnerable and the oppressed he had better tread extremely carefully.

Glad that someone's finally had the balls to call out middle-class white men for appropriating music made by poor black people. Bold.

Smithers, have the Rolling Stones killed

I don’t like that said whiney, white, self-pitying, copyist, imagination-free, privilege-flaunting cisman from England has used this story and these characters from waaaaaaaaaaay outside his experience, knowledge or culture as entertainment, however much Art has given him a hall pass to do so.

Ugh, she sound like Rik from the Young Ones.

Taking someone to task for being cisgender? Is Wendy Carlos her only musical hero? Wth?

Really having a rough time making it through that first paragraph.

"Because Art has LICENCE"

I really hope the writer is 15, otherwise I feel a lot of second hand embarrassment for her right now.

would she have preferred a video of Jason participating in a genteel fox hunt wot wot

(fwiw I couldn't make it past like 0:30 second mark of the video, have no interest in it - none of Spiritualized's videos have ever been interesting imho)

Yeah the video just comes across as more or less trolling, like the album cover. Capital-S SHOCK & Exploitation where you coulda just put up some cool psychedelic swirls.

As a value-neutral description of spiritualized, their music and the way they construct cool, the review is pretty accurate. Problem is that it's anything but value-neutral. It presents itself as a furious, devastating condemnation, and on that level, it's mostly just silly. Spiritualized's rock and roll costume play isn't any worse or different than what the Jesus and Mary Chain and Primal Scream (and Spacemen 3, come on) were up to decades ago. Recycled cool isn't necessarily objectionable, so long as the recycling is honest about itself. Jason's never tried to hide his appropriations. In fact, I'd say that he makes second-handness the focus of his work.

As protest against that repulsive video, the review is painfully overstated, but I understand where the author is coming from. The video is an ugly, insulting, sensationalistic and exploitative piece of shit.

‘Hey Jane’ wears its NSFW like a smug little badge and is a 10 minute long micro-film about a black transvestite prostitute with a small and frightened child who ends up beaten to a bloody pulp by a repressed and shamed white trick. It is repellent and upsetting and I don’t care what Art is allowed to do, I don’t like it. I don’t like the fact that every fist fall, every crunch of boot on facial bones, is filmed in detail and at length. I don’t like what it appears to be saying about people.

The entirety of the content seems to be:

"EDGY!!!!!"

that's what i call review the Idea of an Album rather than the album itself. her descriptions are abstracted so far out from actual musical sounds that it's as if she's rebutting an essay J Spaceman wrote about "How To Make Rock" and not reviewing a collection of songs. like, she could've written that whole diatribe without actually listening to the album, basing it on a passing knowledge of what Spiritualized's music sounds like.

and because the amount of chatter that surround every album release nowadays, i notice reviewers doing this more and more. their reviews are an objection to others' reasons for liking an album and not an objection to weak music. this happened SO MUCH with the drake album last year. it was like "i don't like drake because whining and being conflicted about being ultra-rich should not be a topic of music," which is ridiculous. or "i don't like spiritualized because they reference common musical tropes which is TOTES INAUTHENTIC." what matters with drake or with spiritualized is not what they're doing, but how well they do it. which is very well, if you ask me.

wow there's some grammatical nightmares going on in my posts, sorry yalls

On second reading I've warmed a bit to that piece. She's obviously young and it's better to be writing furious, passionate, overheated screeds than stiff approximations of a 150-word Mojo/Rolling Stone album review.

Though she should have just called it a blog about the video rather than a review of an album I'm not sure she's listened to. And caulk's point about the ongoing trend of reviewing the discourse rather than the music is OTM, but she's hardly alone in that.

cop heroin shoot heroin cop heroin

cop shoots another cop with a gun

rmde at you people

lmfao@upeeps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwC7n8q-oHQ

New Jason interview: http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4145686-i-think-festivals-are-the-death-of-art-dis-meets-jason-pierce-from-spiritualized

Worth reading. Nice to have Jason fully back again

Apparently he played new songs and keyboards at last nights show. Maybe I should go when he hits Brighton...

interesting interview. he has funny opinions.

New songs - one a drippy sounding waltzy ballad which had a few zingers and got progressively less lovely as it went. Not bad, called A Perfect Miracle iirc.

Other one was this insanely heavy one chord blues which lasted about 8 minutes and lyrics revolving around 'one man's x is another man's y' and I could have sworn he was saying 'hoo-rah' a lot. But they were playing so loud his wittering was hard to make out.

But he ended up playing most of the new record (which gets a bit dull live), with the exception of Take Your Time, Ladies & Gents, and a version of Electric Mainline that was the loudest thing I've ever heard. Ever managed to drown the drummer out towards the end, just this massive sound/huge bass. But J was playing tonnes of intricate guitar stuff and keyboards, and even got his daughter out onstage to sing that song she's on on the new record.

Saw them tonight, they played COME DOWN EASY in the encore.

Agreed about the new songs, "A Perfect Miracle" is corny but still all right, but the eight minute one chord blues thing was a major highlight of the concert.

Is Huh? a universal word