Spiritualized live review
Time was when a trip to a Spiritualized concert was a cast-iron guarantee for sensory overload: bright white light and screaming guitars would be fired at the audience like scud missiles, the only respite coming in the achingly heartfelt, world-weary quiets that would precede the louds. However, people move on, and the current incarnation of Jason Pierce’s ever-revolving door of session players seems just as happy to offer a limp hug as blast you to smithereens.
And that transformation is a shame: while Spiritualized’s desire to try new things is admirable, it also rams home the fact that their trump card remains their ability to overwhelm, visually and sonically. They do that twice tonight, in the opening brace of Sweet Jane and Electricity and in the closing Electric Mainline, where the bass throb is breath-shorteningly heavy, but between these two highlights are only tantalising nods towards the intensity at which they’re so expert, surrounded by saccharine, sickly ballads barely distinguishable from boyband fodder and, indeed, from one another.
Pierce clearly has no desire to return to the all-out noise-rock wonder that built his band’s reputation, but he cuts a frustrating figure in his recalcitrance: it’s no coincidence that the encore, in which the youngest song (a beautiful Ladies & Gentlemen) is more than 15 years old, is the strongest part of the performance.
