Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

If I had to make a no-doubt-ill-informed guess it would be that Jason Pierce isn't actually bothered about videos at all and the record company just punted the commission to someone they thought would make an impression. Which isn't to excuse it, but I'm not sure how much conscious input he would have had either.

Ha ha, no one is responsible for anything, it's all just the gatekeepers.

(Though isn't Jason's wife a film maker, so he might actually be more bothered about it, than would appear?)

so, anyone wanna talk about the album?

Sure.

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.

― caulk the wagon and float it, Tuesday, April 10, 2012 1:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My kingdom for an eyeroll emoticon.

dude, he rhymes "day" with "day" in a like really pure essence way.

Streaming it now ... had a really good feeling about it based on a couple of recent live recordings. People alluded to it upthread, but yeah this would have made perfect sense as the follow up to "Let It Come Down" (my fave SPZ album btw).

call it pretentious but i'm being totally sincere. it's why i like the lyrics of, say, "Home of the Brave" so much even though they're not particularly "good" lyrics. but i think i invest less importance in lyrics than a lot of people on here, so.

maybe that is an eyerolly thing to say, but that's been jason's strategy since day one (also true of the jesus & mary chain). idealization of cliche is the method.

lol, song #9 is named after a mississipi records gospel comp.

I haven't really listened to Spiritualized much since "Let it Come Down", which I loved with all my heart. I'm kinda interested in this stuff but this first song is pretty meh.

@scott, think about it. singers/lyricists in the popular music tradition have been rhyming words with themselves, rhyming "face" with "place", forcing "again" to rhyme with things that it doesn't, etc., since this shit all got started. just as Spiritualized's music pulls simple tropes from all over rock's history, J's lyrics take its most basic tropes (drugs, love/heartbreak, God) and play them out in a simple way. i'm not saying he could write better lyrics if he wanted to, just explaining why the band's lyrics work for me in an unusual way.

idealization of cliche is the method.

contenderizer otm

I see what you're all saying about the mixing ... "You Get What You Deserve" is bizarre, *really* vocal and guitar heavy, then the coda happens and it's swimming in bass and the drums nearly disappear, like it's a rough unmixed demo. It has to be some kind of weird compression from the stream, I'm not sure what to make of it if it was mixed intentionally that way.

Great song though.

i prefer to call it stoner laziness, but you can call it whatever you want to call it.

x-post

i always feel bad for his back up singers too. :(

i mean you could even pay someone to look up words that rhyme with "day" if you don't feel like doing it yourself.

"You Get What You Deserve" is bizarre, *really* vocal and guitar heavy, then the coda happens and it's swimming in bass and the drums nearly disappear, like it's a rough unmixed demo

think this sounds great and am sure it's purely intentional. Jason's at his best using weird mixing methods (see also: Pure Phase)

i mean you could even pay someone to look up words that rhyme with "day" if you don't feel like doing it yourself.

i'm not really defending pierce, morbs, cuz i haven't loved a spiritualized album since ladies and gentleman..., but i do think that the referentiality and simplicity are intentional. for whatever that's worth.

I Am What I Am lyrics are totally funny imho

wait, did you just call me morbs? take that back.

I was listening to that Hatchback album Zeus + Apollo the other day and was thinking they should do a collaberation with Pierce.

wait, did you just call me morbs? take that back.

That is the second worst thing a person can be called imo.

...is this about where I confess that I still haven't heard the previous album and can't see myself getting all excited for this one either? I dunno, I think he just lost me somewhere.

he should just hire songwriters. or cover good songs that already exist. same with nick cave. and any other spoonjunemoon lazybones out there. no shame in covering good songs. or hiring songwriters. people do it every day. the sound will still be sorta cool. million old country songs that are good and better than jayspace's stuff.

or at least bury the vocals so that i can't hear every word.

same with nick cave.

betcha can't say YOU'VE rhymed "Orpheus" with "orifice" anytime lately ya jackmunch

i was gonna but then i realized that they didn't rhyme.

"That is the second worst thing a person can be called imo."

jackmunch is number one, right?

i was gonna leave, but now i'm curious what other names i can get called on here.

lol, you're not a morbius, scott

not yet

I'm really liking this album, more so than I have recent Spiritualized ones.

The closing song is almost a Spiritualized pastiche yet still sounds great.

After my initial excitement after hearing the live run-through last year, I'm completely detatched and uncompelled. At least A&E felt like Jason was pushing himself forward as a songwriter (and there are some genuine creepy moments on it), but this just feels like a scavenge through whatever was on Jason's hard drive.

Perhaps it's time to fire the band again?

He needs to start wearing that DRUGS NOT JOBS tshirt again, that will really go down well right now. It is a boring, expendable album for me and I dont take any pleasure in saying that. He does need to sack the band and then hire Hatchback as his new band and stop writing terrible lyrics. And get out of this 'pity me junkie' bullshit, that is the scant emotional landscape of all his albums really. Dont get me wrong I love a lot of Spiritualized, but this is mediocrity.

How long again did "Hey Jane" leak? I feel like I've totally heard this song before...

Oh wait.. I heard it on the radio last night. That was it.

I listened to this on Saturday and was pretty unimpressed, it picks up at the end a bit but otherwise it just feels like a trudge.

http://thequietus.com/articles/08533-spiritualized-sweet-heart-sweet-light-review

Thoughtful of the Quietus to put that Huh?.jpg next to that nonsensical first line.

That's a terribly-written review actually.

yeah that review is appalling. by "subterfuge" I think he means "antidote", although I'm not really sure

I also don't think it's true that Spiritualized's reputation rests entirely on "Ladies and Gentlemen...".

The morose lyrical ambiance is off set by a winsome string / jangling guitar combination that sounds like Cast. There is a strong late 90s pop sensibility at play elsewhere, too. 'Get What You Deserve' smacks of something that Ian Brody of the Lightening Seeds would come out with, were he asked to write a song in the style of George Harrison

There's also a drum beat reminiscent of Shedd Sevan.

To say nothing of Guy Dodd

I'm yet to meet anyone who considers them merely 'alright'.

sup

it's too bad that this album is getting such a bad rap! it's true that it's kind of a boring album, but "hey jane," "headin for the top" and "so long you pretty thing" are all mega-classics imo, and scattered strategically so that their good vibe carries over to the next song, and the whole thing is a delicious treat. that's what i think anyway.

also reading this thread, i remembered that shakey mo collier is a michael moorcock character and that's why i'm really posting, sup dude??

i don't *really* care about lyrics, but dag

mark iv otm, imo

yep

also sup

bad rap? http://www.metacritic.com/music/sweet-heart-sweet-light

I think So Long... will definitely become one of my favourite Spiritualized songs. There's just something infectious about it.

Nice live version here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbYm6GlAm8o