Jason Pierce and his current Spiritualized line-up have recorded a new album entitled Amazing Grace. The 11-track, 42 minute album does not feature a hundred piece orchestra and is a much rawer sounding and more rocking record than 2001’s magnificent Spiritualized opus Let It Come Down. We’ve actually had a copy of Amazing Grace for a couple of months now, and were going to run a review of it in Issue 4 of Under the Radar, until we were asked us to pull the review because the album’s release date has been pushed back. Up until now, the music media hasn’t mentioned anything about this album, but now it’s been reported on nme.com, and we felt our duty to finally let you in on it and post our review of the record. We were shocked when we received a copy of Amazing Grace in the mail, as there were four years between the release of 1997’s acclaimed Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating In Space and 2001’s equally epic follow up, Let It Come Down. It was surprising that Pierce had been able to record and mix a new studio album in such a relatively short space of time, as he is notorious for spending many months in the studio mixing Spiritualized’s albums. Consequently, Amazing Grace is not as ambitious as previous Spiritualized records, but it also isn’t trying to be. When we spoke to Pierce last year he hinted at this more stripped down direction that the band would be embarking on. “I think the way it’s going with the band at the moment,” he said, “that the recordings we’ve made recently are more about documenting the way that they play and the sort of interaction of the people in the band, rather than constructing a bass line up kind of thing; or, ‘This is the guitar line, let’s build this into something, let’s make an album.’ It’s been more about documenting the way people are playing, if that makes sense.”