Spiritualized Songs in A&E 2LP

Songs in A&E is a beautiful, chilling record and it was very nearly the last thing J Spaceman would ever release.

In 2005, with the writing and recording well underway, Spaceman was rushed to the Royal London Infirmary with double pneumonia. The sleeve of this reissue is a photograph taken as he lay in what his close friends and family feared at the time was his deathbed. "We thought he'd gone," recalled band mate John Coxon at the time.

The album is a collection of graceful, country-influenced songs that muse on familiar themes of love, death, hope and hopelessness. The country element was informed by a small black 1928 Gibson acoustic he'd bought in Cincinnati while the band toured the Amazing Grace record. Spaceman called it "The Devil."

J Spaceman: "Mostly, when you buy a guitar, like most things, you don't really have any idea of whether it's good or not. And this shop had about eight of the same models for comparison, but this one was in a cage, to keep people away from it, like they knew it was kind of special. And it's beautiful. It just sings. And it kind of came with those songs, which is obviously a sort of romantic notion, but it really felt like it did. I'd never written on a guitar until this point and it seemed to come with all of this information."

Newly focused energy, willfully restrained arrangements, and taut compositions give the set a sheer emotional power that no Spiritualized recording has ever displayed before, making it, quite possibly, their finest outing yet.

Songs In A&E is Pierce's best work since Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space—and easily his most personal. While Pierce's haunting hymns have always been rooted in simplicity, most Spiritualized records have buried them under layers of feedback or gauzy stratosphere. Songs strips them down to their vulnerable core, with Pierce's voice sounding unnervingly ragged on confessionals like 'Death Take Your Fiddle,' backed by a mournful choir and the morbid whooshing of a ventilator. But even for an album whose final words are 'funeral home' (on the heartbreaking eulogy 'Goodnight, Goodnight'), there's still plenty of uplift, from the Can-esque freak-blues of 'I Gotta Fire' and 'Yeah Yeah' to the gospel sing-along of 'Soul On Fire,' which boasts one of the most stirring choruses Pierce has ever written. Death has never sounded so alive.