Spiritualized: Down Time.

Spiritualized

Spiritualized play the Arena on Wednesday.

On the record, Spiritualized are a complex beast. Perhaps rightly hailed as Pink Floyd’s rightful successor, Spiritualized roped in the talents of over 70 musicians for their current release Let It Come Down. Led by the sprawling musical vision of founding member Jason Pierce, Spiritualized conjure up an expansive sonic palate fusing the grandiose aesthetics of an orchestral performance with the heartfelt passion and fire of garage rock and some massive acid fuelled abstract psychedelics into an almost overwhelming, but still quite organic wall of sound.

Live, however, this tour is the first taste Australian audiences would have had of the band. An event that should have anyone wanting a challenge from their musical experiences should be salivating over.

“We’re touring as a seven piece band. It’s been seven for a while now in the States. It was 13 with a horn section, but the last 45 dates or so have been cut down. Everything we do is doe on borrowed money. It’s not been easy,” Jason explains.

Considering Spiritualized’s on record complexity it’s surprising paring down the arrangements was a simple task.

“It’s not about the arrangements,” Jason continues. “The arrangements were important for the last record. The arrangements were made for the songs, but once the songs exist it’s about finding the electricity in the songs, finding the core of the songs.”

“Once they exist as songs, it’s like covering someone else’s songs. To replicate the record takes 100 people and it’s like cabaret, which is kind of dumb. Just playing the notes in the right order does not make for great music. You have to find something with an absolute excitement, which is what playing live is about. If it was just about cabaret, every band in the world would be absolutely fantastic, which just doesn’t work. It’s not about accuracy, it’s about a feeling.”

“You can’t get it from listening to live recordings. If you listen to any of your favourite live albums, it’s not a tenth as exciting as being at the shows.”

That said, why did Spiritualized put together the live Royal Albert Hall disc a couple of years back?

“We get a lot of people asking us for live records all the time. To be honest, it’s not even the best live show we did that year. Far from it. It was just the best recording we had made during the period we were touring.”

Do you record all of your shows?

“Pretty much, yeah. Not in the way that Royal Albert Hall was done, but yeah. After a while the show kind of grows and gets more realised, but initially we use them for a reference. I think the band now is as good as it’s ever been, and I don’t think we need to listen back to the tapes to figure out if what they’re doing is working or not.”

I remember reading somewhere that Let It Come Down and to a lesser degree Ladies & Gentlemen… We Are Floating In Space was about Spiritualized re-constructing the music you spent your first albums de-constructing. Do you actually plan your music like that?

“Wow… No. I think each record is just about doing something beyond what I think I’m able to do. It’s all rooted in the same music. It’s the music I grew up with, just rock and roll – spiritual music and the blues. That’s the language. I think people confuse it with their own expectations of what we can do. They’re waiting for something beyond their wildest dreams or something. I just want to take things as far as I can take it. This album was trying something we hadn’t done, which was an acoustic kind of album. The instruments have their own sound. The strings sound like strings, guitars sound like guitars, the drums sound like drums. I wanted to make an album that wasn’t just a soundscape. It’s about the notes chosen rather than crunching up the sound. I hadn’t approached a record like that before.”

Do you ever know what a Spiritualized album will sound like before you head into the studio?

“Nope,” he chuckles. “You know that thing where people say they’ve got a sound in their head that they just had to get on tape? I don’t think anyone does that. It’s application and doing the work. It’s not beyond people, but I don’t think I have that kind of talent. There’s nothing mystical about it. I think experiences should be open for everybody. Anybody can do it.”