REVIEW: ‘Everything Was Beautiful’ is true to its name
Hitting play on a Spiritualized album is like signing yourself up for some obscure water deprivation therapy your friend told you about. Best known for their 1997 album “Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space,” Spiritualized always manages to walk the line between the known and unknown.
Dunking your head into their new album, “Everything Was Beautiful,” reveals layers of really solid production with lyrics that occupy themselves with all of life’s ups and downs. There’s joy, love and kindness here but also confusion, sadness and a fear of the unknown.
Listening to Spiritualized feels as if frontman Jason Pierce invites you to step into the unknown. He has stuck with the band on and off for more than 30 years and continues to push himself towards his ultimate goal of finding either God or an explanation for life’s complexities. Or perhaps, he just likes getting high and writing saxophone solos.
Pierce never holds himself back from creating hypnotic, all-encompassing tracks, and the opener, “Always Together With You,” holds those characteristics, which make it some of his best work on the album. It’s so dense that it feels almost suffocating — but in the best way. It reflects the subdued joy of being in love, with delightful lyrics like, “If you got a lonely heart / I would be a lonely heart for you / If you want a rocket ship / I would be a rocket ship for you.” The overlapping vocals near the end feel as if they belong in the climactic scene of a romance film, full of heart and earnestness.
The second track, “Best Thing You Never Had (The D Song),” shows more of Pierce’s rock side. An electric guitar carries us throughout, while a deep and apparent blues influence and gospel-like backing vocals bring up the emotion. The repeated chorus of “Gonna be a long ride down, the best thing you never had” turns it into a rousing song denouncing drugs and the disappointments of life. It’s not exactly too clear what Pierce is going against, but the emotion is still there.
The next two tracks reflect Pierce’s talent in creating a soundtrack for life. “Everything Was Beautiful” feels perfect for those days where the details get a little hazy in your memory as time moves on, but it doesn’t matter because all you can remember is the pure love and happiness that you felt, tinged with slight melancholy.
“Let It Bleed (For Iggy)” has a slower beginning that blossoms into something grand, with lyrics such as “I wanted it to say something so special and true / I wanted it to cut deeper and darker for you” that reflect a feeling of regret. Pierce manages to capture the ache of having all these overpowering emotions and yet never verbalizes them correctly. On the other hand, “Crazy” comes off as a sweet, if a little plaintive, love song with a folksy influence. Pierce, conflicted over a relationship, croons “And I know you can’t love me now, not today / All of my thoughts are of you / But I hope in time that we might find a way.”
“The Mainline Song / The Lockdown Song” is a Springsteen-esque track that is slightly fuzzier around the edges. It feels as if you’re racing down a two-lane highway, wind whipping through hair and pure openness ahead of you. While “The A Song (Laid In Your Arms)” catapults the listener in a different direction, with a cinematic instrumental opening that leads us into its seven minute runtime, second longest only to the closer. Full of contrasts, the song leans on a variation of “One man’s crime is another man’s thrill” repeatedly throughout the track. Druggy imagery swirls around the listener as Pierce divides their mind in two, even using a quite literal divide of the song itself in an instrumental bridge of paranoid sound that quickly becomes grating.
To conclude the album, “I’m Coming Home Again” serves as a powerful and melancholic closer for the album. Here, Pierce reminds us that despite all the soul-searching and wandering throughout life of the previous tracks, he is no closer to figuring out the meaning of anything. Leaving us with something to think about, Pierce sings, “I’ve been there and I’ve been back again / Gonna dull it with lorazepam / Kind’ve had it with philosophy, ‘cause I’m thinking I am, but I’m failing to be.”
However, Spiritualized isn’t for everyone. The final three tracks, while all quite lovely in their own ways, have long runtimes and the meandering sound can become annoying for those unfamiliar with longer tracks. Spiritualized sometimes feels like the album version of a drawn-out high, and at times, the songs can blend into each other in a way not reflective of their quality.
Overall, it’s an album chock full of the ups and downs of life reflected in tracks bursting with sound and emotion. Spiritualized manages to make seven tracks and close to 44 minutes count to the fullest, while still unable to answer the biggest question on Jason Pierce’s mind.
Rating: 5/5