You
know when you’re at a show and the band ends their
set with a long epic, some kick-ass fugue or extended ballad
with heavy instrumentation and heavier
lyrics, culminating in the best work of the night? They usually surprise you
by not leaving the stage -- they follow that up right away with an up-tempo,
2-minute closer, sometimes just a cover, something easy to wind down and let
the kids party. After the release of Let It Come Down, the gigantic, massively
produced and extraordinarily effective album-of-the-year-for-2001 that came after
a 4-year break for Jason Pierce and his rotating line-up of rockers, Spiritualized
have now returned just two years later with a quick, off-the-cuff, lean & mean
rock record that sounds just like the take-a-breath cruise control song after
the big hit of the night.
Amazing Grace is ultimately a minor work, an album with nothing new to add
to the band’s canon of genius and a general tone of Pierce coasting on his
talent. It clocks in at a surprisingly brief 43 minutes, as the 11 tracks breeze
by like an impromptu show at Spaceland. A sharp contrast to the 100-piece orchestra
and gospel choirs that accompanied the band on Let It Come Down and added to
the lush, refined studio appeal of the album, Amazing Grace is loud, dirty, sloppy,
and crude. But it rocks hard. “This Little Life Of Mine” and “Cheapster” are
standard Spiritualized jams, fast and full of feedback, chunky bass grooves,
organ sounds, and messy cymbal crashes looping through Pierce’s wailing. “The
Power and the Glory” goes a bit overboard, unraveling into a cacophonous
barrage of belching horns and tumbling drums.
The best loud rocker on the album is “She Kissed Me (It Felt Like a Hit),” a
direct homage to Phil Spector’s early ‘60s masterpiece “He
Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” the infamous drama about domestic abuse
that was yanked off the radio soon after its debut. By flipping the title around,
Pierce cleverly infuses the tune with the idea that love is like a drug --
a topic Spiritualized fans are used to hearing. Like the best speedy songs
on Ladies
and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, the track introduces its catchy riff
and builds in noise with slapping piano and squealing electric guitar.
Free from the weight of the strings and choirs that made his last album so
rich and polished, Pierce is working with just a handful of musicians this
time around,
so even the ballads feel more spare and immediate. As usual, they’re the
most involving moments on the album, and Pierce applies his penchant for borrowing
cartoonishly simple melodies from old hymns for songs like “Hold On” and “Lord
Let It Rain On Me,” the latter of which recycles similar lyrics from a
number of past Spiritualized downers: all these songs are along the lines of “Jesus
Christ, woe is me, etc. etc.” In fact, the songwriting, as bold and brassy
as it is, gets a bit predictable: either it’s a fast jam where Pierce says “Come
on” before the guitar solo in the chorus, or it’s a laid-back ballad
insincerely name-dropping Jesus and/or love poems. Even the album title this
time around is a generic reference to the gospel numbers Pierce keeps mimicking
-- he even covered “Amazing Grace” once, though it doesn’t
appear on the disc.
But the record ends on two characteristically fantastic slow numbers. “Rated
X” takes a while to get off the ground but settles into a plaintive whispering
drone about how “regret creeps up on you.” The album closes with “Lay
It Down Slow” (not to be confused with 2001’s B-side “Going
Down Slow”), a “Broken Heart”-like solo that builds upon an
endlessly resolving chord and spends the last two minutes replacing Pierce’s
voice with an electric guitar. Although partially uninspired and lacking in amazement
compared to the last two albums, Amazing Grace does capture Spiritualized’s
live energy and immediacy, when Pierce has nothing to create his sound but
basic instruments and amps. The result is entertaining and light-hearted, and
even
a minor album from Spiritualized is a major force in your stereo. |
