Album Review: Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

Over the course of 20 years, each Spiritualized studio album has not only maintained exceptionally high standards, but also represented a personal watershed for its inspirational, sometimes troubled lead figure, Jason “Spaceman” Pierce.

While Sweet Heart Sweet Light retreads many of Pierce's obsessions – doomed relationships, death and, most frequently, reconciling religious beliefs with a life of wanton hedonism – there are some new developments. An almost unrecognisably angry Pierce details not only his self-destruction on Get What You Deserve, but repeatedly threatens to shoot his partner in her sleep. Hey Jane raises similarly fatalistic concerns, but is a rumbling, defiant anthem to rank with the best of them. The high point, no pun intended, may well be Headin' For The Top, a Spiritualized psychedelic opera of over-ridden guitar and orchestral soul. From this peak, Pierce seems to lose his compass, with multiple recurrences of lyrical clichés, the cod-philosophical Life Is a Problem being a major culprit. I Am What I Am is a fuzz-bomb shuffler that never leaves the garage, while Freedom is unnervingly similar to Freedom Isn't Free from the Team America soundtrack. Perhaps most concerning is Mary. Much of Spiritualized's brilliance stems from their extreme alchemy of screaming guitar FX with strings and brass. Here, the usually fail-proof formula drags like a weekend chore.

With their dedication to pure sound, playing a new Spiritualized record for the first time should be nothing less than a quasi-religious, knee-quaking experience. While the first half comes close, Sweet Heart Sweet Light fails to deliver a chapter worthy of Pierce's genius.