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spiritualized: let it come down
It's Las Vegas, 2001, and Jason Spaceman takes the stage. He is sweaty and bleary eyed. His ruffled shirt is unbuttoned; a limp bow tie hangs from his neck. He stands in a spotlight and begins to sing: "The trouble with the straight and the narrow is it's so thin I keep sliding off to the side." Strings swell. The lights come up on a full orchestra and gospel choir. Spaceman drops to his knees in a sweaty gesture of confession. Women scream and throw hotel room keys and drug paraphernalia on stage.
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Welcome to Spiritualized's fat Elvis phase. Jason Spaceman and his cohorts once fused guitars, strings, and effects into hymns to fucked-uppery that were so huge it didn't matter how unholy they were. On Let It Come Down, Spaceman sounds like he invited the London Philharmonic and a heavenly choir over for a jam session, but they all took one pill too many and ended up crashed out on the couch. The self-parody peaks in "Don't Just Do Something." As Spaceman's symphony spirals upward into a climax, horns herald a revelation. Is it the second coming? No, Spaceman has just sat up and had a pot thought: "Sometimes I like to sit around/I'm just contemplating sitting around."
But fat Elvis had his charms too. Instead of "Caught in a Trap," we get "Won't Get to Heaven," a blues and gospel jam in which Spaceman lets the choir simmer the song down in a way that merits the symphonic swell that comes in between. Unfortunately, you've got to sin to be saved, and the rock songs here are so tepid that they wouldn't offend Jerry Falwell. Whereas Spiritualized once tore us apart with songs of self-destruction and reconstruction, it now tears us apart to watch Spaceman's self-aggrandizement as he surrounds himself with a liner booklet full of collaborators. But hey, 50 million members of Spiritualized can't be wrong. (Arista)
—Eliot Rose
All materials © 2001 The Yale Herald, Inc., and its staff.
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