Goodbye to all that
Frontman for Spiritualized ties up loose ends with melancholic album Sweet Heart Sweet Light
When Spiritualized’s Sweet Heart Sweet Light was released recently, many immediately sought to draw parallels between the band’s seventh effort and its 1997 classic record Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.
Granted, the British psych/ space- blues/ rock outfit helmed by frontman Jason ( Spaceman) Pierce had recorded an album that featured all the hallmarks of Spiritualized: Long- winded odes to drug addiction, religion and redemption, but the similarities between the two may have come from the band touring with Ladies and Gentlemen in its entirety while the new album was being written.
But Sweet Heart Sweet Light may bear more resemblance to 2008’ s masterful Songs in A& E, an album released after Pierce was diagnosed with double pneumonia and technically died twice.
Sweet Heart Sweet Light was recorded while Pierce was under-going experimental chemotherapy-based treatment for a degenerative liver disease caused by years of hard drugs and alcohol abuse.
The Sun reached Pierce in London via phone to talk about Spiritualized’s latest effort, where it fits in the band’s canon, and where Pierce’s mind went while recording the album.
VS: Why do you think people associate Sweet Heart Sweet Light with Ladies and Gentlemen so much? How did touring your classic album influence the new record?
JP: There is a big trend in the U. K. to just look backwards. Bands are reforming to play their old records: “These were the times. This was when it was great.” That was putting my toe in the water and see what that’s about. A little voice in my head was saying, “Don’t go for this. Don’t do this. Don’t play this record for the next year and a half.”
The influence of [ Ladies and Gentlemen ...] on this record was not a sonic influence, it was about making new music, to make records that are about now. In an odd way, it was a slightly negative thing touring that record. It’s too easy to look back. [ Sweet Heart Sweet Light] is full of melancholy for the music I love and people talking like it’s over. It’s not just bands performing their old records, it’s the way people write about these moments as if it’s as good as it’s gonna get. I felt a great sadness that it was how it was going to go.
VS: How do you explain the connection people still feel with Ladies and Gentlemen?
JP: I think it just got lucky. I don’t think it’s any better than the one that preceded it. Pure Phase I think is a beautiful record. It got appalling reviews, like three out of 10 in the NME. People got into Ladies and Gentlemen because we got an awful lot of press. Sometimes, it’s your first contact with the band that’s the biggest moment.
VS: You were diagnosed with liver problems after finishing Songs in A& E in 2008, which was an album where you were diagnosed with double pneumonia and technically died twice.
JP: The liver thing was to be expected — “Of course it’s f--- ed.” The treatment was worse than the disease, so I had to choose a time when that was going to hit me the least.
So I chose to do that when I was making the record. I didn’t want to do it while I was on tour.
VS: How did the effects of the treatment compare to other “medication” you have taken in the past?
JP: There were no good sideeffects, nothing to recommend to anybody. I was properly wasted. It was not a nice place to be. It shortened the treatment from a year to six months. Sometimes it feels like I didn’t make the record because I wasn’t fully in my head when I made it. It’s the only record I’ve finished not being sure what I’d made [ which explains the album cover simply stating, “Huh?”] Usually I know what it is and what it’s about. I really wasn’t sure what this record was. It’s good to hear people say that it works and that they like it.
VS: What kind of album did you have in mind in the first place?
JP: I wanted to make a pop record. You can hide in the abstract or the distortion, but with pop music everybody understands. I wanted to make a record that didn’t ask much of the listener. If it did get a bit difficult, we were going to walk you into it, we were going to hold your hand.
That was the idea: To make something that was just a beautiful collection of songs that worked together and all leaned on each other. It wasn’t reaching for the stars or trying to change the world or anything.
VS: Do you feel it turned out that way?
JP: I haven’t listened to it since I made it. Playing it live is great, and it makes proper sense because that’s what I like doing. Playing live is like being in an avalanche: You push the sound around, but you don’t have to capture it. Making records is such a chore.
VS: Considering everything that has happened and how the album closes with So Long You Pretty Things, do you feel this is a farewell record?
JP: A little bit. It wasn’t meant to be like, “So long everybody,” but it seems like I tied up a lot of loose ends that sat around. There’s little bits of I Am What I Am that started with Dr. John years ago. Too Late was written originally for Marianne Faithful, but she was recording at that time.
Those bits have been put away now.
VS: Your 11- year- old daughter Poppy sings on So Long You Pretty Things, so there’s a passing of the torch there maybe?
JP: It’s more about the passing of time. To have her involved in the record and writing those lyrics is so beautiful. It gave the album a sense that it was a complete thing.