Description
Spiritualized — the long-term psych-pop project of English songwriter J Spaceman (Jason Pierce), former member of Spacemen 3 — is a band whose music seems tailor-made for our world of pandemic-born isolation. Pierce’s breakthrough, 1997’s Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in Space set the tone 25 years ago: This is gorgeous, ornate and ambitious psychedelic music that dances and twirls inside your head as if you were the last person on earth. The best Spiritualized songs create a feeling of musical liftoff—an aural sunrise, where the world feels wide open and empty. On Everything Was Beautiful, the band’s first album in four years.
More than 30 musicians played on Everything Was Beautiful — Pierce alone plays 16 different instruments — but that maximalist aesthetic still results in a headphone record best suited for your next solo trip. Everything Was Beautiful is one of the most assured and curiously emotive albums in Spiritualized’s impressive canon. The tracks drift by and seem to fold into each other, probing for new levels – deeper insights, perhaps? Becoming lost to this melodic flow is nothing less than a joyful experience.
