Confessions of a Deadpan Altar Boy
by Kurt Orzeck, photography by Alex Freund | 00.00.0000

"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
-Stephen Dedalus Ulysses

Have you spoken with a Spiritualized junkie before? Oh, they're a hoot. It's like talking with a Mormon--or someone who firmly believes they've been abducted by aliens. "I was chosen to hear that music," they might say, or "Life hasn't been the same ever since." Eyes glaze over in remembrance of that first Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space headphone experience. Lips part as they recall flashes of sonic mayhem and cool-wave bliss probing their ears. Many can be labeled "legally insane" from the amount of acid they've eaten, but all become lost in space at mere mention of the group.

There's something far more important, though, that Spirit-heads share in common: they want their minds expanded, not shrunk. And that's where Jason Pierce, who turns 38 in November, deserves the most credit: for every creative impulse he indulges in, he spurs the denizens into indulging their own.

So, naturally, Spiritualized puts into stark relief the so-called and so-adored new-garage movement that has sufficiently disseminated itself into the mainstream. For all its kitsch and name-drop-ability, the trend's Achilles heel is becoming more and more apparent: originality will always be sacrificed in lieu of its lust for the past.

Think of all the time and energy spent mimicking old-school sensibilities, personal resources that could instead be poured into discovering new frontiers. Creativity and self-expression are hocked for a giddy euphoria over accurately replicating something someone else did before you were born. Which, in effect, makes everything fucked.

Look at it this way, kids: Jason Spaceman is that illuminating science professor who blew your mind and taught you to dream. Jack White is the cuddly but ultimately unstimulating history teacher holed up in his office down the hall, reminding you to memorize all those presidents.

And truth be told, it's the science teacher who doesn't give two turds about what's going on around him. He spends too much time with his head in the clouds. And Pierce wants nothing to do with all this retro hubbub.

"I think music is so forward-looking--or should be. It never satisfies. That's what makes rock 'n' roll exciting, and that's why I kind of loathe this thing at the moment where people are talking about garage music being back in fashion. Everybody's making great garage records, which is really exciting. I think it's great to strap a guitar around your neck and make a noise with it. To me, it's the best place to start in music. But at the same time, I kind of loathe this idea that it's about the authenticity with which it's recorded that makes it great. This idea that great music stopped when they started making digital discs... or that great rock 'n' roll music stopped in 1966, and everything after that isn't authentic. I don't think Jerry Lee [Lewis] was content to sit on an upright in some studio."

Isn't it outrageous that so many "forward-thinking" music lovers believe great tunes ended in 1966?

Imagine, for a brief moment, that we never moved past that pivotal year when Pet Sounds was let loose: the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, Janis Joplin played her first solo concert and Lyndon Johnson established the Department of Transportation. Punk, prog and paisley pop would be non-existent, and Spiritualized would be a distant dream.

High Fidelity prudes are stuck in Jason Pierce's craw as he stumbles out of his hotel bed at 11:00am. For all the grandiose gospel anthems, booming horn segments and atmospheric forays that bulk up Amazing Grace, Spiritualized's fifth album of original material, Pierce, the wizard behind the curtain, speaks in a surprisingly small and quiet voice.

Remember, this is a man so bold and intrepid that he dared to stage the highest show on earth atop Toronto's CN Tower in 1997 or, the following year, at the World Trade Center in New York. With strobe lights and a stage presence more massive than a row of Cyclopes, even an "average" Spiritualized show finds the small-framed, shaggy-haired Spaceman standing onstage hunched over and humbled by what he's flung from his own fingertips. And yet here he speaks, smaller than life.

In fact, one could go as far as to say that he looks like a lowly priest at the altar, overwhelmed by the glory he has exalted. 'Course, that's a metaphor the atheistic figure would hardly agree with. Despite calling forth a variety of religious connotations on the last two albums with songs like "Lord Let It Rain on Me," "Won't Get to Heaven (The State I'm In)" and "Lord Can You Hear Me," Pierce has admitted that the colorings were anything but religious."It's the same as saying 'baby' or 'girl.'"

Pierce keeps his beliefs--religious, political, what have you--close to his chest. The one chunklet of personal information that is widely known is that Richard Ashcroft stole away, a la Eric Clapton, the quiet musician's longtime girlfriend, Kate Radley, and the two married shortly thereafter.

Maybe it was that change of events that turned Pierce inward-bound, clipping the strings that tied him to his previous bandmates. Whatever the case, it's clear that he is locked in his own world now, from his careful--and almost always roundabout--way of answering questions to the faint, humbled tone with which he speaks.

Indeed, getting Pierce to commit to an interview is not much unlike trying to coax a turtle from its shell.

"What do you do besides making music?"

"Just nothing."

"Do you read?"

"Yeah."

For someone who exudes so much emotion in his songs, whether it's the crippled cries of a broken heart or an unequivocal, earnest embrace of life itself, Pierce is practically deadpan in his speech. Humor, disgust and
gratitude--all which would could flow naturally from the questions he's asked--are omitted entirely from his overwrought responses.

Perhaps he's just saving his juice for the next time he croons. Or maybe it speaks to a larger issue--defeat.

"Once you finish the record and let it go and say, 'All right, this is my new record,' that's where your success ends, as far as I'm concerned. Everything else outside of that is somebody else's deal.The amount you sell has to do with marketing. The chart placement is to do with the efficiency of that marketing. Unless you're in the business of selling records, that's where it kind of cuts off."

This leads to a, uh, rather short-lived discussion on age. One would expect Pierce to be at least somewhat vocal on the topic; after all, he's inching toward his 40s, and even decided to open Amazing Grace with a song called "This Little Life of Mine."

Instead, this is all we get:

"Age... more on some days than others."

After a few moments' pause:

"Not that there's any race against it. I think the... I'm always going to... you have to get the music right."

More than most bands, Spiritualized is one that seems to never look over its shoulder. Which is why the recently released Complete Works Volume One album--a retrospective, if you can believe it--continues to boggle fans.

"It doesn't sound like it's music from 12 years ago," says Pierce, "I got so many people in America saying,'How can I get all the U.K. singles and EPs?' I also did it because I knew that I was leaving Arista [for Sanctuary], and I think it's better to be there and in control of things like that."

After switching labels and having, for the first time, looked back over his career, one wonders how Pierce views the current state of Spiritualized.

"'Elegance' is the only word I can think of to describe what's going on now," he says, tying to commensurate his new record with 2001's Let It Come Down. They also mark a new phase in the band's career: despite roping in a litany of outside performers, both are essentially the work of Pierce and Pierce alone.

Within this context, it seems perfectly rational for Pierce to have defoliated temporarily permanent Spiritualized members Mike Mooney, Sean Cook and Damon Reece--just like a space shuttle sheds its spare parts--around the time of Let It Come Down. (The lost members reconvened to form Lupine Howl after they were fired.)

"It wouldn't have been possible to make this album without having made Let It Come Down," he asserts, seconds before launching into one of five separate attacks on the U.K. press surrounding Amazing Grace.

"People in England were saying this is a garage record, that it was not unlike where I started with Spacemen 3. And I think this is worlds apart. I don't see this new album as being a garage record. It's too grand for that. Besides, it'd be a fucking big garage for getting 26 people in. I think of a garage recording as being,'OK, we're as rehearsed as we can be. Press record.'" (The press, in the meantime, decried Pierce as having lost his mind.) While he's honed the cast down to about a quarter as many musicians as that album had for Amazing Grace, he's retained the horn section, string quartet and female singers and many of the elements that made his previous astral work so divine.

"Some paper in England said that this album's a reaction against the last album," he says."Like, the last album was as big and orchestrated as you can get, and this is pared down. I don't really see that. I see it as a continuation; they kind of inform each other.The main thing was that this wasn't a look back."

There's an especially revealing moment on the song "Lord Let It Rain on Me," the seventh track on Amazing Grace, in which you hear Pierce and his gospel singers chant a refrain from the previous album:"Lord, let it rain on me, let it all come down." It's then that you realize that Spiritualized albums flow along the same time-continuum, and it becomes even less a surprise that Pierce would say something like:

"I kind of have this feeling that maybe I've only written one song, and I've just been spending 16 years trying it out in different ways. I don't really know. I honestly don't know. I've always thought that, 'This is how it is.' Regardless of how people read the songs, I've always thought that I'm satisfied that this is where it's at, this is what makes life life. I think this record has stated things quite plainly: This is how it is. This is where we're at. This is certainly where I'm at."

"And as for where you're going?"

He laughs gently.

"Don't care." F