Spiritualized Performing \"Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,\" Radio City Music Hall, NYC

Spiritualized Performing “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,” Radio City Music Hall, NYC, July 30th, 2010

Aug 04, 2010 By John Everhart Photography by Santiago Felipe

A disco ball crashed to the stage of New York City's Radio City Music Hall just as the lights went down and the curtain began to raise, and for those who were close enough to see, the normally docile Jason Pierce looked perturbed, yelling at a couple of roadies. Understandable, given that had anyone been stage center, they likely would've been seriously injured or even killed. A harbinger of a cursed night for Jason Spaceman and crew? More like par for the course, given his tumultuous past decade, rife with death and loss and illness, culminating when he nearly died in a London hospital from Pneumonia complications in 2007. But this glorious night found him impervious to distraction, as he stoically served as the Svengali behind a startling reinvention of his band's brilliant 1997 album Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, seemingly content to blend into the backdrop of the magisterial songs, enveloped by a string and brass section and a full gospel choir.

But Pierce has always come across as though he's a mere conduit for some cosmic alchemy, and he lassoed it magnificently on this evening. Kicking off the show with the record's spine-tingling title-track, it was evident that this wasn't an act flogging around their greatest album. It was elongated, transformed into something even more meditative and pensive than on record, as Pierce pined for, "a little bit of love to take the pain away" over haunting choral vocals and the ethereal saw of strings, and even extended the Elvis Presley "I Can't Help Falling In Love" lyrics featured on the original further, singing the full verse of, "Only fools rush in, but I can't help falling in love with you," largely excised from the original due to legal issues.

Nearly all the tracks were given dramatically different readings, particularly the more rocking numbers such as "Electricity," which was imbued with even greater locomotive intensity thanks to the stark juxtaposition of the braying brass section and mellifluous gospel choir, while "Come Together"'s hypnotic sway was snarling and nasty, lent a vicious, New Orleans Big Band-like snarl by the brass flourishes.

But the night's most revelatory moment came during closer "Cop Shoot Cop." The corrosive junkie's elegy was molded into something downright redemptive, as Pierce, sounding bereft and spent, urged, "Cop shoot cop/I believe I have been reborn," ushering in a cathartic white noise outburst equal parts sheer bleeding in-the-red sonic guitar squall of The Velvets' White Light/White Heat, coupled with the sneering bile of The Stooges circa Raw Power, effectively symbolizing the rebirth the lyric hinted at.

After a brief break, the band returned with an encore consisting with a lovely reading of Let It Come Down track "Out of Sight" and an affecting take on the gospel hymn standard "Oh Happy Day." A bit underwhelming given the emotional enormity of what had come before, but the latter felt somehow emblematic of the spirit of the evening, as these tracks have in essence become standards to a generation of ardent Spiritualized acolytes. And as Jason applauded enthusiastically at both the audience and the backing musicians as he exited the stage, it was clear that he realized these songs weren't just his anymore. In perpetuity, they belong to everyone who'd fallen love with their rapturous beauty.

(www.spiritualized.com)