Spiritualized?

You have posted 15,000 messages

man, i have been here a long ass time. it's actually not acurate as my phone says i have posted about 25 more than that. so i don't think my phone posts are counting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbO0xabMlhA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Boev1lbaNQI

That was awesome

on my way, so excited!

Fascinating new details on Spiritualized inner workings (abandoned sessions with Youth and Visconti? *still* losing money on tour???) for the obsessives. And some comments on Spacemen 3. https://www.vogue.com/article/jason-pierce-spiritualized-kings-theatre

still love this new album

elvis, do spiritualized still rip live

saw them on a and e tour and was surprised at how transformative and heavy it was

Spiritualized was one of my favorite bands for a long time, but it's been diminishing returns for years now. The new one is less half-assed than the last couple, but is pretty dull regardless. I'm not surprised they still do a great live show though.

elvis, do spiritualized still rip live

saw them on a and e tour and was surprised at how transformative and heavy it was

not Elvis but short answer, yes. i have seen them now three times. once on the Pure Phase tour, then i saw them as the opening band on the OK Computer tour. as you may or may not know they only had two US dates, one in New York and last nights in Los Angeles. i feel very fortunate that i was able to see this show. i think Jason might be having health issues, i don't know for sure but he did sit down the whole time and is very skinny but he sounded so beautiful last night. he had a 30 piece band behind him. adding him there were 31 people on stage, it was a very special night as there is no way he can do this for a full tour. they started with some older songs and then after around the seventh song they played the new album front to back. i have only been listening to the new album for the last few weeks so i knew it inside and out. i love the new song and now reading the above article it a very good last album ever by Spiritualized. they ended the show with the last song from that album and did a three song encore. they had a 10 women back round singers that made it feel like a southern church choir. as most of you know, a lot of songs have to do with Jesus so it worked very well. this show would have been a junkies paradise as i felt like i was on drugs when i was not. his voice is stronger than ever and his Spiritualized backing band was on point all night long. there were two drummers too. a very special band and i would see them if they add more dates, it was well worth it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsn4xoyGaWM

He has performed sitting down since... 2000? And also often performed sitting down in S3.

I’ve seen them probably a dozen times

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

hmm, i don't remember him sitting down when i saw him in '95 or '97 but i'm probably wrong.

xpost

oh, you said since 2000, yeah i missed 18 years of touring.

Orpheum Theatre, Los Angeles - October 16, 2018:

1. Hold On
2. Come Together
3. Shine a Light
4. Stay With Me
5. Soul on Fire
6. Broken Heart
7. A Perfect Miracle
8. I'm Your Man
9. Here It Comes (The Road) Let's Go
10. Let's Dance
11. On the Sunshine
12. Damaged
13. The Morning After
14. The Prize
15. Sail on Through

Encore:

16. So Long You Pretty Thing
17. Out of Sight
18. Oh Happy Day
19. Hold On (Reprise)

I love the new album but I have been left wondering how much better it would have been if he'd been able to have the gospel choir & orchestra on it a la LAGWAFIS.

It's great to have a chance to hear them like that in these live videos and I wonder if/hope we'll see another live album in the not too distant future. Or at least a bootlegged soundboard recording of one of these shows.

elvis, do spiritualized still rip live

saw them on a and e tour and was surprised at how transformative and heavy it was

It's somewhat difficult to answer this one. I've seen Spiritualized 16 times now - the first time was in 1992 when there were still a quorum of Spacemen 3 members in the band (Jon Mattock on drums) and the last time (until last week) was 21 years later at Pappy & Harriets during a Joshua Tree windstorm (Kid Millions on drums). Both shows included "Medication" and for me, that's about as good as it gets. LGM is my favorite album. Never really cared for LAGWAFIS much until I saw it performed live start-to-finish at Radio City in 2010 when that potential of krautrock gospel + Sun Ra transcendence finally lined up. It's that potential that keeps me coming back.

Both shows included "Medication" and for me, that's about as good as it gets.

inclined to agree here

I love the new album but I have been left wondering how much better it would have been if he'd been able to have the gospel choir & orchestra on it a la LAGWAFIS.

I would be so much happier with the new album if it was a well-recorded "wall of sound" with all of the players from these shows rather than something pieced together from Jason's computer.

I was thinking that, but if we didn't know that was how he recorded it, would we really be able to tell the difference?

Yes

thanks Elvis and Bee OK (also good to see you around again, seems like you have been around less lately)

you can definitely hear the difference between the live orchestration/performances on, say, Let it Come Down, and the patched-together sampled approach on the new one. budgets matter.

Very true

You're right I haven't been around much and when I have I have been on the baseball board. I'm still thinking about opening up a new Artist thread however. Not positive yet.

Xpost

I was at the Los Angeles show, and I was happy to see "Hold On" get so much shine. I have always loved that song and have never seen much praise for it around. I did think some details from the new record got lost in the wash with the big ensemble, but Lord, it washed over me.

I'm glad Stay With Me has come back into his setlists, that song is great and always felt like a kind of bastard child from between Pure Phase and LAGWAFIS that got overlooked

Complete Works like a warm bath this evening.

Vol.1, that is.

http://magazine.vinylmeplease.com/magazine/spiritualized-liner-notes/

ah that was really good

Signed up with VMP just to get this.

Got an original copy of LGM recently but haven't had a chance to listen to it. The only one I'm missing now is Live At Royal Albert, but I've heard that all vinyl copies are shit.

That was good, thanks. Fitting they should connect it with OK Computer, as Spiritualized supported Radiohead here when the latter was touring that album.

That's one of my biggest concert misses. We got to a ticketmaster location way early but there was some other big show going on sale at the same time. Spice Girls? A huge line of teen girls in front of us. By the time I got to the counter Spiritualized/Radiohead was gone. Couldn't even find a scalper at the show. We hung out in the will-call area hoping something would come through but at least we could sorta hear Spiritualized.

I remember the show here really well, actually. As a fan of both bands and albums I thought it was totally awesome they were on the same bill. It was at the Rosemont Theatre in 1998, which was the biggest place they had played locally but likely nowhere near the biggest local place they could have potentially played (and certainly smaller than any place Radiohead would ever play here again, and also bigger than any place I would ever see Spiritualized again, iirc). And yet as I remember it, Spiritualized, even with that album, hadn't quite clicked with many people at the time, or at least were totally overshadowed by the hype of "OK Computer" here, and as a sign of how much bigger at least Radiohead would get, I didn't even have a problem getting comped tickets to the show, as Radiohead wasn't quite at hip talisman level. But the next time they played Chicago was in Grant park in August 2001, which was memorable for lots of reasons: a huge happening, with perfect weather, the month before 9/11 fucked up everything forever.

I saw them in SF with Radiohead but left after Spiritualized.

Great story, it's always good (and somewhat of a relief) to see Pierce is in good spirits, doing well. I'm not joining a club to buy a record, but it does look nice. I remember the insane prices the 12x3" pill box went for!

I received the LGM Fat Possum reissue yesterday. Not a fan of reissues that change the album artwork, but this one is interesting. I had assumed that the blobby angel/devil were a computer graphic, but they are sculptures that were photographed. For the new cover they rephotographed them and you can see little cracks running through them if you look closely, especially throughout the fingers. Whatever they are made of hasn’t aged well, but it makes for a nice image.

Is it just a reissue or also remaster/bonus tracks?

yeah, i can see the vinyl being re-available is a useful thing but will the cds be any different?

No bonus tracks. Remastered from original sources is what the press release says. CDs available.

wonder how it sounds. one of those albums I know backwards and forwards.

*** Spaceman Reissue Program ***

Pure Phase - the sublime second album - reissued with new artwork on double 180-gram glow-in-the-dark vinyl.

Plus a new series of Pure Phase merchandise based on the original, vintage designs.

Available to pre-order now https://t.co/dbqnehvtTw pic.twitter.com/2Rk0OVaFU8

— Spiritualized® (@officialSpzd) April 27, 2021

I need to bust out my old Pure Phase cassette copy--love that album.

I wish this recent vinyl-only Spaceman/Coxon guitar noise/improv set was also available as a DL--def not going to appeal to everyone, but the samples are scrappy feedback catnip to these ears: https://boomkat.com/products/play-the-red-krayola-live-1967

Man. My vinyl budget is stretched impossibly thin right now but I kind of want to hop on this- Lazer Guided Melodies was sold out from every source I could find the day I found out about the reissues (through the Pitchfork review, because I guess I am out of touch now)

though hey never mind Fat Possum have a restock of the white vinyl (though bafflingly not the regular ol' black) up for preorder:

https://store.fatpossum.com/products/lazer-guided-melodies?variant=32321767538801¤cy=USD&utm_medium=product_sync&utm_source=google&utm_content=sag_organic&utm_campaign=sag_organic&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsqmEBhDiARIsANV8H3afUq9aMlnSkVz5tdabVj-au4AAExB3i3IjiwBC8HxzWjKfJ6btbqQaAksnEALw_wcB

fat possum vinyl is not good ime but maybe they’re better now

Hm. I went to the Steve Hoffman forums and the response is...mostly good? There have been a couple of people who received moderately warped discs but Fat Possum are apparently very responsive about replacing them.

I just ordered, since I've never owned these albums in any physical format; if anyone else is considering, the code FATPOSSUM20OFF works and got me $12 off when buying both.

My copy of the black vinyl ‘LGM’ has the worst warp I’ve had in ages on the first disk (looks like a rollercoaster) bit it plays through fine. Overall sound is fine, not amazing. Have ‘Pure Phase’ on order.