Spiritualized

Let It Come Down
Spaceman / Arista, 2001

For Jason Pierce, heaven is made of puns and used syringes. Early in his career, as half of droning psych-pop duo Spacemen 3, he thought he’d already found it. On 'Walking With Jesus' he described chatting with the son of God, realising his hedonistic, drug-soaked utopia was sinful and then freaking out at the prospect of not making it into the real heaven. “’Cause if heaven’s like this,” he mused while stoned, “then that’s the place for me.”

Of course, there’s always the coming down. For Pierce, no morning after was heavier than his break-up with girlfriend and Spiritualized keyboardist Kate Radley, who went on to marry The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft. Broken-hearted and finding warmth only in “my spike and my spoon”, Pierce created a masterpiece of dream-pop, gospel and apocalyptic jazz, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, which beat OK Computer to become NME’s album of 1997.

For his next record, four years later, Pierce swore to do something totally different. Instead, he took some drugs, fired most of his band members, hired 120 studio musicians and made something remarkably similar: Let It Come Down. It’s a re-make in almost every way. The alternation of genres at particular points is virtually identical, though the sentiment is more pleasant and less tortured, though also less visionary.

The album’s biggest number is 'Out Of Sight'. Depending on taste, it sounds like an orchestra successfully simulating a drug high or, as an ex-girlfriend once described it, “a Kahmal show-tune”. Pierce lets his circular wordplay run wild, looping puns over the bombast of horns and harmonica: “I was just looking for some peace of mind/ but I just couldn’t find a piece of mine…”

The charm of a record so indulgent is that every note is infused with its creator. Pierce trumpets defeatist wit like an ethos for living, but sings with the conviction of the second coming. There’s something wonderful about a self-aggrandised rock star who pens sappy love songs and prayers to God while offering the following advice to his peers: “If you’ve got the money for a rehab cure/ you ain’t got a problem you can’t afford.”