Oct 15 2009 11:26 am, PIC: Joel Knight
Spiritualized
Royal Festival Hall, London
13/10/2009
Crossing the Thames on the way to the plush Royal Festival Hall the splendour of the city, luminescent at night, is in stark contrast to a tramp urinating off the bridge to the amusement and horror of all who pass. This clash between a beautiful world and the chaos that fills it is, perhaps, a central theme of ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’, the 1997 Spiritualized classic being performed in its entirety tonight.
On its release the album topped NME’s best of the year list, beating even Radiohead’s OK Computer to the top spot. Its creator Jason Pierce clearly intended, with these gigs, to give it the treatment it so deserved. And as the thirty-odd musicians clamber onto the stage it’s clear that it may just live up to the high expectations. ‘Ladies And Gentlemen…’ and ‘Come Together’ use the heavenly choir as God surely intended, adding about a dozen extra layers of sound to the already overwhelming surge and swell crashing onto the helpless audience. However, during ‘I Think I’m In Love’ the sheer scale of the orchestra, coupled with the seven-piece Spiritualized, threatens to become so big that it almost loses the original sense of helpless melancholy drizzled throughout the album.
Luckily the feeling is short lived and on ‘All Of My Thoughts’ the gorgeously wheezy organ and trumpets come into their own. An unbearably heartfelt ‘Stay With Me’ ramps the pathos up to eleven. And with the stage bathed in purple light the stabbing violins elevate the song into an almost transcendental hymn. No time for tears, though as the best number of the night aims to shake the very foundations of the venue until only rubble remains - ‘Electricity’ closing proceedings with a lengthy psychedelic wig out that Miles Davis, in his ‘Bitches Brew’ period, would have been proud of.
‘Cool Waves’ adds the night’s most yearning, sweet vocal from Pierce who apart from singing duties remains enigmatically silent for the near two-hour set. And the album’s themes of lost love, spiritual wonder, existential angst and pissing in the wind add up to an emotional whirlwind of a gig which ends with the band, arms aloft, triumphant and the crowd baying for more.
Ed Devlin
