While some people imploded in the lockdowns and isolation of the epidemic, others were thriving. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI felt like I\u2019d been in training for this my whole life\u201d said J Spaceman in a text conversation last June or so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was referring to his fondness of isolation and when you reframe loneliness as \u201cbeautiful solitude\u201d then it isn\u2019t so bad. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He would walk through an empty \u201cRoman London\u201d where \u201ceven the sirens had stopped singing\u201d and where the world was \u201cfull of birdsong and strangeness and no con-trails.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He used the birdsong walks to listen and try and make sense of all the music playing in his head. The mixers and mixes of his new record, a ninth studio album, weren\u2019t working out yet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Spaceman plays 16 different instruments on Everything Was Beautiful<\/em> which was put down at 11 different studios, as well as at his home. Also he employed, more than 30 musicians and singers including his daughter Poppy, long-time collaborator and friend John Coxon, string and brass sections, choirs and finger bells and chimes from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. So, there\u2019s a lot going on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me. Not like you\u2019re spiraling out of control but you\u2019re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that\u2019s how you kind of… achieve. Well, you get there.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Eventually the mixes got there and Everything Was Beautifu<\/em>l was achieved. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The result is some of the most \u201clive\u201d sounding recordings that Spiritualized have released since the Live At The Albert Hall<\/em> record of 1998, around the time of Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Spac<\/em>e. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The opening track \u201cAlways Together With You\u201d is a reworking \/ supercharging of a track originally released in demo quality in 2014. This new version is a perfect Spiritualized song; a breathtaking, hard edged, psychedelic pop tune where themes of high romance and space travel collide. In one of the most sublime refrains of the band\u2019s career, the backing singers call out \u201cif you gotta lonely heart too\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And don\u2019t we all? Sometimes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n On \u201cBest Thing You Never Had\u201d, we meet characters who blew their mind but \u201cnever had a mind to blow\u201d over backing instrumentation that sounds like a New Orleans funeral procession band who\u2019ve been drinking thinners all night. It\u2019s possible this Stones at Exile-<\/em>erastomp is auto-biographical, but maybe not. It\u2019s hard to remember. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLet It Bleed (For Iggy)\u2019\u2019 is heavy eye-lids and the romantic intricacies of emotional intimacies, a honeyed song that careers into choir-fueled intensity. A country number \u201cCrazy\u201d is even sweeter, a lorazepam Tammy Wynette ballad with backing vocals by Nikki Lane. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Spaceman: \u201cWhen we were mixing, I relied a little bit on what I knew of Ladies And Gentlemen…,<\/em> that if you start throwing mixes together, it stops sounding like what you already know from the past. Some people have a method of making records like jamming Lego bricks together into something they already know but I wanted to do this differently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd like the last record (And Nothing Hurt) <\/em>was made to go out and perform live, we did the same thing with this, but even more so. We\u2019ve tried to play stuff from this album live before but it never really worked but now we\u2019ve got the record how we want it to be, we have something to launch from.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of all the songs on Everything Was Beautiful,<\/em> the three contained on the b-side are the ones that already sound close to the intensity of Spiritualized\u2019s live shows. The final piece of the recording process involved adding some clarinets and vocals to give \u201cit all a sense of proper chaos\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spaceman wrote the lyrics to \u201cThe Mainline Song\u201d one night while watching the protests happening in America on TV. And if that track is like driving your car too fast with the one you love in a city you’ve never been before, then the following tune The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)\u201d is driving that thing off the edge of the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A stupendously epic tale of \u201cwords that are old as the hills \/ cooked on a diet of mushrooms and pills \/ One man\u2019s crime is another man\u2019s thrill and we\u2019re gone\u201d, it\u2019s a mountainous song, a glorious noise; screeching sax, clarinets, free jazz, improvised chaotic squall, a seething mass of Spaceman rock and roll and its seven minutes are over far too soon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The last (nine minute) tune \u201cI\u2019m Coming Home Again\u201d recalls the atmosphere of \u201cCop Shoot Cop\u201d from Ladies and Gentlemen<\/em>; a brooding, repetitive, swamp song, building and building, abetted by a choir to get deeper and darker over time, with lyrics like: \u201cI\u2019ve kind of had it with philosophy cos I\u2019m thinking I am but I\u2019m failing to be\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe last track was always the thing that the record, hinged around. I wanted it to be almost like a dub, something that just hung in the air. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt develops quite slow and it seemed to be an almost easy option to sort of make it a really screaming free form thing but it’s kind of restrained and held back and it just kind of hangs.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It hangs, it floats and then it\u2019s over. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And you can go back and do it all over again because there are so many layers and layers of sound in this thing that to listen to it once would be selling yourself short. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The artwork is designed once again with Mark Farrow. If you buy the vinyl you can pop a pill box out of the sleeve, revealing gold foil underneath, and assemble the Braille-embossed little thing and put it somewhere in the house. The box set has 8 of them. Literally a boxset. It looks more beautiful in the flesh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n About the boxes: \u201cFarrow and I were talking about what we should do and we just said, \u2018It\u2019s called Everything Is Beautiful,<\/em> how could you not have a pill?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n All these layers, all these details, the year-long mixes, the making sense of it all and the lives lived within these lyrics; for somebody so famously unconfident of his own abilities, isn’t this a punishing thing to keep doing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYeah, but I like what I do. There\u2019s a line from Jonathan Meades that\u2019s about having all the attributes to being an artist. \u2018Paranoia, vanity, selfishness, egotism, sycophancy, resentment, moral nullity and more idiot than idiot savant.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd that’s what it feels like, this kind of thing. You\u2019re your own worst enemy and biggest supporter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere’s a \u2018Of course this is worth it. It’s me\u2019 and then this kind of deep doubt of \u2018What the fuck is this all about?\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd then \u2018Why is it important?\u2019 and then knowing there’s no easy answer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBut it’s there. I know it’s there.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":13161,"menu_order":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true,"inline_featured_image":false},"class_list":["post-13157","artisti","type-artisti","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n