- It's coming up to thirty years since Mr J. Spaceman (or Jason Pierce, as his mother –presumably– calls him) first started up space-rock behemoth Spiritualized, and though the eight records he's released under that moniker are all immensely layered, he has been the sole constant in the band throughout that time. It's a lot of effort to keep up, and the break between his previous album, 2012's Sweet Heart Sweet Light, and this one is the longest between Spiritualized albums so far, with Pierce recording nearly the entire record by himself on a laptop at home. Pierce has even come out and stated that this record – titled And Nothing Hurt - might be the final Spiritualized album, such is the toll that the act of creating such music takes over so long a period. So what do we get as the fruits of such labour? Are we listeners required to plumb similar depths to discover the album's rewards? Although previous Spiritualized albums have generally been widescreen, even technicolour mixes of garage rock, blues, ambience, folk, and gospel, they've also been works of 'serious' music, at various points even being somewhat morose. After such a long gestation period, does And Nothing Hurt fall down a rabbit-hole of navel-gazing?
No. It doesn't. If anything, the album is one of the most easily digestible and enjoyable records Spaceman has made. Hell, large swathes of it could even be described as fun. It's also, by Spiritualized standards, pretty succinct, fitting nicely onto a single piece of vinyl and featuring just one song that breaks the six-minute barrier (the upbeat rocker The Morning After). Though many songs start out quite gently, they pretty much all end up in a cacophonous wall of guitars, organs, gospel choirs, strings, horns, synthesizers and drums. From the banjo-lead opener A Perfect Miracle through to closer Sail On Through, most of the records keeps to a similar –and successful– formula: start out pretty, and then ramp things up to euphoric levels. Only three songs really stray from this formula: the aforementioned The Morning After and highlight On The Sunshine, both of which start out at full tilt and then ride out a bass groove for their duration and Damaged, which keeps things comparatively mellow, wrapping itself in gorgeous orchestral flourishes (although it climaxes with fuzz guitar leads and timpani rolls, so maybe it's not so mellow after all).
All of that is not to say that Pierce's world outlook has necessarily brightened considerably. He's still the same man who wrote Broken Heart on 1997's classic Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. But there's a sense of optimism about And Nothing Hurt, from the album title right through. It's a hard-fought optimism, the sort earned by a fifty-three year old who has been around the block a few times. It sits well.
- Cameron Smith.