Spiritualized – Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space 2LP

Description

Spiritualized‘s third collection of hypnotic headphone symphonies is their most brilliant and accessible to date. Largely forsaking the drones and minimalistic, repetitive riffs which have characterized his work since the halcyon days ofSpacemen 3,Jason Piercere-focuses here and spins off into myriad new directions; in a sense,Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, with its majestic,Spector-like glow, is his classic rock album. “Come Together” and the blistering “Electricity” are his most edgy, straightforward rockers in eons, while the stunning “I Think I’m in Love” settles into a divided-psyche call-and-response R&B groove, and the closing “Cop Shoot Cop” (with guestDr. John) locks into a voodoo blues trance. Lyrically,Pierceis at his most open and honest: The record is a heartfelt confessional of love and loss, with redemption found only in the form of drugs — designed, no less, to look like a prescription pharmaceutical package,Ladies and Gentlemenis pointedly explicit in its description of drug use as a means of killing the pain on track after track. Conversely, never before have the literal implications of the name “Spiritualized” been explored in such earnest detail —the London Community Gospel Choirappears prominently on a number of songs, while another bears the title “No God, Only Religion,” pushing the music even further toward the kind of cosmic gospel transcendence it craves. A masterpiece.