Let's Get Spiritual

Ahh, 2012. Much like a Stephen King sci-fi/fantasy saga, it was a magnificent, frustrating bastard of a year, though thankfully not nearly as self-indulgent.

For me, it began with the penning of an epic tome called The Great Karmic Clusterfuck Of Love, finally feeling like I'd achieved karmic balance, and then continuing to perpetuate the clusterfuck because that's just how it seems to work. You know the drill – Right Girl, Wrong Time, whether for her, for you, for both parties, or even for her live-in ex-boyfriend (I mean, really) as the case may be.

On the plus side, the current state of my love life can be easily summed up by a popular Gotye track, though sadly not the one where I was once shagging Kimbra.

On the professional front, the pendulum swung from Creatively Satisfying to Financially Rewarding. I wondered whether one was better than the other, whose dick you had to suck to have both, or whether it's just the creative's lot in life that they'll forever oscillate between the two in search of that elusive equilibrium, especially considering making music and giving it away was more enjoyable than most of what I got paid for.

Anyway, I've previously pondered my search for life's 'next big thing' now that music isn't the be-all and end-all of my existence, and though it's no longer the most important thing in the world to me, at the time of going to press it's still the main thing while I try to work out what is.

So rather than lament mankind's desire to consume itself out of existence, how a first world country forces third world asylum seekers to live in fourth world conditions, and the depressing realisation that Australian parliamentary debate is about as intelligent as a conversation under a YouTube video, let's talk about what stood out music-wise in 2012.

I could wax lyrical about how Underworld and High Contrast restored my faith in the unifying power of music at the Olympic Games Opening Ceremony; I could blow smoke up everything Hermitude touched, though I think I covered that quite well over in my Writers' Poll; and let's not forget Katy Perry: Part Of Me, during which I fell even harder for her and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that her box played such a prominent role in the live performance footage because I'M JUST NOT THAT FUCKING SUPERFICIAL, okay?

All of the above was quite memorable, but for me the discovery of the year was Spiritualized. Quite how someone who's long worshipped at the altar of Kyuss, The Flaming Lips, Pink Floyd, and any number of space rock explorers has managed to sleep on Jason Pierce and his band of merry men and women for over two decades is beyond me, but cut me some slack – there's a lot of music out there, and you can't always be there first.

From the moment that I loaded up this year's Sweet Heart Sweet Light long-player and pressed play, it was like I'd been listening to their brand of quasi-spiritual jams for years. I bought tickets for their show at the Sydney Opera House in December, and thought I probably should buy the classic Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space as well so I wasn't “that guy” who only has the new album.

On that summer night at the Opera House, Pierce sat motionless on stage in near darkness, surrounded by a crack team of noise-makers, and he purged. There was no “hello”, no “here's an old one for you”, just 90 minutes of pure emotional exposition from a man whose body has threatened to pack it in so many times that by rights he shouldn't even be on stage, let alone flying halfway across the globe for the privilege.

Then came the psychedelic freak-outs – subtle builds from slow-burning jams into cacophonies of noise, punctuated by flickering lights increasing with intensity as the sound did, growing with such power that it felt like you were getting sucked into the vortex, so all-consuming that all you could do was laugh at the ridiculousness of it all…

And then it stopped, and you fell back into your seat with a thud, like you'd just been worked over by a group of musicians who you'd never met. I like to think I've pretty much seen it all, but that was most definitely a first.

A couple of weeks later I had to decide whether to keep watching Vanilla Sky, or flick over to NITV for Toomelah. I was already committed to the former, and the fact that someone thought the blackfellas in Toomelah needed their English subtitled annoyed me no end (c'mon guys, it only took a few episodes to decode Barksdale and co in season one of The Wire), but I digress…

So there I was, wondering why Noah Taylor kept on showing up to give Tom Cruise knowing nods, when who should pop up on the soundtrack but Spritualized and that familiar refrain: “All I want in life's a little bit of love to take the pain away…”

And then, at the end, when poor old Tom doesn't know if he's coming or going, Noah Taylor appears again and gives him a choice – stay trapped in a possibly perpetual loop, or take a leap into the unknown and have faith in whatever it is that comes next.

Which I guess, in a roundabout way, is my way of saying good luck and godspeed in your quest to dominate 2013.

It's your Universe. Reach for the lasers. Safe as fuck.