I’d better just go ahead and admit that I fucking love Spiritualized. If J. Spaceman were to walk onstage and sing the alphabet, I’d punch myself in the face. Irrational enough? There’s a certain mood here that I’m trying to capture and make the metaphorical crux for this review.
I like to show up early, because I like to see the other kinds of people that show up early. Plus I don’t have a lot of friends. And I’m short, so venue floor space gains the price of Times Square reality once a 6-foot-5-type jerk-off tries to squeeze their ass right in front of me. I assumed watching Spiritualized wasn’t going to be the kind of activity during which I would dance senselessly with a bevy of strangers, and with the exception of a drunk and/or shrooming girl with great hippie dance moves who knew all of the words, I was right.
So here’s the kind of people who would show up early to a Spiritualized show: other short people who really like this band, “gear” dudes who love taking pictures of other people’s pedal boards (p.s. this shit is boring, no one cares, stop), mid-30 year olds who like to talk about their interactions with “famous” people (one lady went from some dude in Cake, to Wayne Coyne, to Gus Van Zandt in the same breath), some other folks with no friends who were actually nice to talk to (we spoke of rent prices in various cities), and people who love living their concert experience through a fucking iPhone (also, stop, no one cares, etc.). Also, the venue decided to get its fog machine on nice and early, and nothing is weirder than hanging out in a pre-fabbed fog room in full light with strangers.
I take a lot of vitamin-D to help deal with the sun-less Portland winter, and I also listen to a lot of feel-good music. I mean, all music experiences should be feel good, and I’ve not had one in recent memory that wasn’t, but hearing J. Spaceman and co. (which included the incredibly enthusiastic drumming of Oneida’s Kid Millions) play a cycle of songs that included “Shine A Light,” Rated X,” and “Let It Flow” kind of compounded all of my bullshit into one burst of physical joy. Not only that, but these were songs that weren’t played the last time I saw Spiritualized about a year ago at the same place, and thank god for that. Even my fan boy-ness isn’t impervious to a recreation tour, and this set was nothing like the last one I saw. I mentioned Kid Millions above, but it looked as if Mr. Spaceman had kicked everyone out of last year’s band except the guitar player Doggen, (who looks to be a close friend).
Last year’s arrangement had everyone spaced out into a semi-circle, with one half wearing all-black, the other white, the presentation a part of a post-album tour process. This arrangement had everyone jammed together as close as possible, and felt like a new group of musicians presenting fresh interactions. The free-jazz blowouts were frequent and varied. The guitars of J. Spaceman have straps, which he doesn’t use because he sits down, and my favorite signifier of sound assault came when he leaned back and held his guitar towards his amp, strumming the neck while everyone else took it as a sign to go all, “Pound! Pound! Pound! Errereerrrrr! Thud! Thud! Thud!” It drowned out the Wayne Coyne BFF-groupie lady and her annoying penchant to snap about a thousand iPhone photos right next to my head, an act which more or less spoiled my closed eyes enjoyment of the quiet-yet-sporadic breakdown of “Rated X.” Why do people do that? Can’t you talk about the years you used to be cool at home? Once again, vindictive sounding, but my garden-variety hipster ass dressed up for this shit; favorite button-up shirt, clean brown blazer; I take my selfie-dates seriously.
Did I mention that Kid Millions is a fucking boss? I once saw him play drums/hold together a Plastic Crimewave Sound Guitarkestra, which was about 30 or so guitar players jammed into New York City’s Cake Shop all playing “E” (or “in E,” or “maybe E,” or “E-ish”) for half an hour. That guy has energy; something of which I was afraid would overshadow the group. But it enunciated parts, especially the freak-outs. I didn’t imagine ever seeing this guy play with Spiritualized, but now it makes sense. He’s been playing with Yo La Tengo recently, as well as a number of other groups. Flat out, he’s a good musician who melds well with others.
Some songs were rearranged to the point of being almost unidentifiable. They ended the pre-encore set with “Take Your Time,” which is more or less a segway song on Lazer Guided Melodies, but as they did it, a great finale. Better than the single song, semi-reluctant encore of “Walking With Jesus.” Last year’s set ended with an exhaustive 40-minute “Cop Shoot Cop,” an experienced I was enthralled by but happy to leave in its time and place. The end of this show didn’t have that same amount of gravitas due to such, but it seems that J. Spaceman isn’t the kind of performer who looks to redo on past successes. Enough of an indication would be that they started on a new song rather than “Hey Jane” or some other album opener. In total I think I counted three new songs (memory’s a little fuzzy, and the internet tells me so).
I wish I could end this with some sort of great summarizing line, or clever coda, or other writing device that wraps up some logical conclusion, but I have none. Memories don’t work in that way; I don’t have a succinct way to encapsulate my thoughts with endpoints. I’ll still be thinking about this show, thinking about listening to music in the dark, thinking about poor attempts to turn off my collective frustration, whatever related comes around. We all want to think of ourselves as better than the adversary (in my case, the people I found myself so annoyed with), but now I realize how much I missed by vexing over the problem so much.
