After reissuing Spiritualized's 10.0 masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and playing the album in full on European stages last year, Jason Pierce (aka J. Spaceman) will bring a choir, strings, and horns to New York City's Radio City Music Hall for one more Ladies and Gentlemen show July 30. It's being touted as the last gig of its kind-- which makes sense since Pierce is well on his way toward a new album, as he told us in a recent interview. He said we could expect a new Spiritualized LP "early next year, if I'm lucky."Pitchfork: How did these Ladies and Gentlemen shows originally come about?
Jason Pierce: We did an All Tomorrow's Parties show in Australia with Nick Cave. We did one show on top of Mount Buller and played down the mountain-- the crowd sort of comes down the slope with you. We stayed up all night and the guys from ATP asked if we'd ever play Ladies and Gentlemen live, and I said, "Yeah." It was a decision made at altitude-- they got me at the right time. It could've been any album. If they'd asked for Pure Phase or Let It Come Down, we would've wound up doing that.
As much as an audience wants to hear new stuff, they're rarely receptive to hearing a whole new record as a live show. But with Ladies and Gentlemen, they've had 13 years to sit with it and they've got these ideas about where the songs take them. We did the shows in England, and I wasn't going to do this for the rest of my life, so we wound it down. And then we got talking, like, "If we don't take it to America now, we ain't never gonna take it." New York is as far as we could go, unfortunately.
Pitchfork: It doesn't seem like you're somebody who looks back a lot. Has it been hard for you to dedicate your time to this 13-year-old album?
JP: Well, I'm making a new record right now. But, for a lot of bands, it seems like these kinds of shows with all old songs are the best thing they can do. I'm not saying that with any disrespect, but I don't think that's the case with what we're doing. I don't even want to chance it.
And, with Ladies and Gentlemen, I don't think that the band that made that record could've played it when it came out. It's like it's taken this amount of time to do it real justice live. Now we can play it from beginning to end and it's going to make real fucking sense. I think the album I'm working on now is already more important.
Pitchfork: How far along are you with the new album?
JP: Quite a ways. I'm all over the place when I make a record; I don't even know what I'm doin'. As soon as things start to work, that's when a lot of problems start because you have to start raising everything to that level.
Pitchfork: Has revisiting Ladies and Gentlemen inspired you to do more of those types of big arrangements on the new material?
JP: Yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't influencing the music I make now.
Jason Pierce: We did an All Tomorrow's Parties show in Australia with Nick Cave. We did one show on top of Mount Buller and played down the mountain-- the crowd sort of comes down the slope with you. We stayed up all night and the guys from ATP asked if we'd ever play Ladies and Gentlemen live, and I said, "Yeah." It was a decision made at altitude-- they got me at the right time. It could've been any album. If they'd asked for Pure Phase or Let It Come Down, we would've wound up doing that.
As much as an audience wants to hear new stuff, they're rarely receptive to hearing a whole new record as a live show. But with Ladies and Gentlemen, they've had 13 years to sit with it and they've got these ideas about where the songs take them. We did the shows in England, and I wasn't going to do this for the rest of my life, so we wound it down. And then we got talking, like, "If we don't take it to America now, we ain't never gonna take it." New York is as far as we could go, unfortunately.
Pitchfork: It doesn't seem like you're somebody who looks back a lot. Has it been hard for you to dedicate your time to this 13-year-old album?
JP: Well, I'm making a new record right now. But, for a lot of bands, it seems like these kinds of shows with all old songs are the best thing they can do. I'm not saying that with any disrespect, but I don't think that's the case with what we're doing. I don't even want to chance it.
And, with Ladies and Gentlemen, I don't think that the band that made that record could've played it when it came out. It's like it's taken this amount of time to do it real justice live. Now we can play it from beginning to end and it's going to make real fucking sense. I think the album I'm working on now is already more important.
Pitchfork: How far along are you with the new album?
JP: Quite a ways. I'm all over the place when I make a record; I don't even know what I'm doin'. As soon as things start to work, that's when a lot of problems start because you have to start raising everything to that level.
Pitchfork: Has revisiting Ladies and Gentlemen inspired you to do more of those types of big arrangements on the new material?
JP: Yeah, I'd be lying if I said it wasn't influencing the music I make now.
Ryan Dombal @'Pitchfork'
Was lucky enough to be at that ATP Mt Buller gig, I do hope that ATP returns to Australia in the not too distant future (with The Pop Group in tow???)
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