Spiritualized ★★★★ Everything Was Beautiful FAT POSSUM. CD/DL/LP
Jason Pierce’s ninth LP under this alias: artwork broadcasts ‘44 mins’ economy.
As Jason Pierce revealed in MOJO 338, Fat Possum’s Matthew Johnson advised him against his first outing since 2012’s Sweet Heart Sweet Light (pt. 2 of his ‘infirmary diptych’) being a double-album, instead splitting the material between 2018’s above-par And Nothing Hurt, and this equally sprightly standalone. Since 1997’s benchmark Ladies And Gentlemen…, Spiritualized records have occasionally sounded painstaking in their detail, even clinical; the strength of these latest two is that they feel live, like a riotous assembly of (chiefly) guitars, horns and voices (even while, ironically, budgets dictated they were collaged on ProTools). Much of Everything Was Beautiful has a vital, thundering pulse: anchored on an insistent rock’n’roll riff, Best Thing You Never Had builds to a tremendous din before a trombone solo arises magnificently from the soup. Some fantastic songs aboard, too, including Always Together With You’s Daniel Johnstonstyle naked expression of fatherly/romantic commitment, and a country-soul ballad, Crazy, complete with pedal steel. So, yes: utterly beautiful, as advertised.