July Record Club - Spiritualized, "Ladies and Gentlemen,..."

Well, it's a long album, I suppose.

Comments of a Disengaged So-and-So from Somewhere


I have strong feelings about this record which can only be coaxed out during some sort of bender. Those are fewer and further between now, so a brief reminiscence is all that's available currently.

I was a Spacemen 3 first-gen fan from 1989 onwards. I listened to Lazer Guided Melodies shortly after it released. Bought Pure Phase. Didn't much pay attention to this record until I was swarmed by the US Volkswagen advert in late 1998. Bought it in 2000. Listened to it repeatedly. Amazing that Jason Pierce managed to get so much instrumentation into each song. Even the emptiness portrayed in lyrics has a rich, comfortable fabric of music to relax in, much like the various "just right" mixtures of opiates and stimulants coursing through J. Spaceman's veins before, during, and after this record.

"Home of the Brave" is a nice homage/reference/continuance to Laurie Anderson after their cover of "Born Never Asked" on Pure Phase.

Congrats on the win, 'rigg.

I'm listening to it tonight. This is not really my thing. Too much of it is damned repetitive. Dellarigg calls this "narcoticised bliss". To me it is just boring. The vocal delivery contributes to this, with this whispered style with no dynamic contrast, or expressive movement.

Sorry. But this is just not my thing at all. The thing I hate the most about modern music (other than Autotune) is the droning, repetitive music. While this is definitely better than the mechanized modern sound, I still find it boring. There is nothing that annoys me more in music (other than Autotune) than droning repetition.

Appropriate that Dellarigg compares Spiritualized to The Verve, since this album is sometimes read as Jason Pierce's salve for a broken heart after his keyboardist Kate Radley dumped him for Richard Ashcroft (though Pierce has denied this). The record is definitely suffused with some sort of resigned melancholy, which may have been why I couldn't really relate to it in 1997, the year when my UK music listening was more big-beat techno like Chemical Brothers and Underworld. I also was reading a lot of Rolling Stone that year and, as was their wont, they misrepresented a challenging album with a 3 1/2-star review (the RS Record Guide now has it at 4 1/2). It was a few years before I really clicked with it--I wouldn't call it my favorite album of 1997 now but I've returned to it about once per annum since.

The drone and repetition never bothered me because I find it in the vein of 20th Century avant-gardists like Steve Reich and Glenn Branca. I also hear parallels to what early Mercury Rev might have become if they knew how to write a straightforward melody. At least according to Wikipedia, "Cop Shoot Cop" is indeed a reference to the NYC post-punk/industrial band that was one of the more frustrating albeit interesting entries when I did the '90s Most Unsellable Major-Label Albums discography review.

Anyway, glad Ladies and Gentleman won and prompted me to return to these hymnals. As someone who has struggled in the past with the compulsion to block out unwanted feelings with chemicals, it resonates.
 

What do you like of 20th Century classical/minimalism? I'm legitimately asking because I always like recommendations and I know you have a significant knowledge of classical.