Spiritualized Live, Vancouver Commodore Ballroom
Jason Pierce Tours New Album Songs in A&E, September 13 2008
Sep 16, 2008
In the back sit a keyboard player and a drummer. It’s a rather stripped-down stage set up for a band often known for taking enormous choirs and walls of sound with them on the road, and the sparseness works. Sometimes, as they say, less is more.
Sadly however, less is not more for the Commodore Ballroom, which tonight is only half-filled with the devout and a crowd far too young to remember the band’s crowning, 90s glories Lazer Guided Melodies, Pure Phase and Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. It’s a Saturday night and while droney minor-chord noiseniks Mogwai drew a full house the weekend previous, these critical darlings are looking at the glass half empty.
Jason Pierce and Amazing Grace
Or is it half full? Certainly, Jason wanders on stage uncharacteristically smiling and clapping at the crowd. Even the kids in the front seem content hearing tracks from Amazing Grace (including the titular set opener which revs from gentle to full throttle into “You Lie You Cheat” from the band’s latest, Songs in A&E). It’s not the best Spiritualized disc by a long shot, but lets face it, newer fans’ memories have a shorter shelf-life.
It’s good to have Pierce back. Even if he says absolutely nothing during the gig, he – and his small village of guitar effects pedals – are in top form. His voice is not nearly as ragged as on the amazing Songs in A&E and his guitar playing expert as always.
Pierce is the musical brain in the outfit and has carried the bulk of Spiritualized since its inception. Even the more rubbishy albums from the band’s 18-year history have sounded otherworldly and/or planet-sized. His nickname “Jason Spaceman” has been, and will continue to be, an apt moniker.
Songs in A&E On Fire
Tonight, it’s actually the newest tracks that sound best, even if the crowd do want to hear the fuzzy and meteoric “Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” (which they are finally rewarded with towards the gig’s end). “Soul on Fire”, “Sitting on Fire” and “Sweet Talk” are ragged and beautiful, with Pierce’s stark croak made warmer by the backup singers’ contributions.
The eerie, wheezy “Death Take Your Fiddle” leaves the crowd gobsmacked as Pierce sings, achingly, about how “morphine, codeine, whiskey, they won’t alter/the way I feel/when death is not around”. Certainly, Amazing Grace’s “Cheapster” and “She Kissed Me (It Felt Like a Hit”) grind dirtily tonight and “Lay Back in the Sun” from Pure Phase and “Come Together” from Ladies... are both phenomenal.
But lest the crowd think his 2005 life-threatening bout with double pneumonia and age had made the singer melancholy, his 10-plus-minute take on “Take Me to the Other Side” (a song by his old band, the seminal Spacemen 3) is pure, bombastic indulgence.
It causes the mouths of babes in the front row to hang open, and forces them to re-wedge their earplugs and wait for something they’ve heard before. It explodes for what seems like a decade and it’s a monumental set-ender. The reviewers and record store clerks in the back are rejoicing. “Cop Shoot Cop” may have been noticeably absent but who can complain when you’ve got tinnitus from a Spaceman 3 track?
After a quicky and forgettable encore (“Lord Can You Hear Me”) Pierce and Co. leave the stage. Smiling. And clapping at the audience. Glass definitely full.
Spiritualized at the Commodore Ballroom was presented by LiveNation
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