Jason Pierce performing Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space at the Royal Festival Hall, London. Photograph: Jim Dyson/GettyReleased in 1997, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is the key text in Spiritualized's canon. It was the album that synthesised all of frontman Jason Pierce's influences (from gospel to free jazz) and preoccupations (drugs, religion, the agony of love). Performed in its cacophonous entirety at the Royal Festival Hall, in a suitably extravagant arrangement – aside from Pierce and his six-piece band, there is a mini-orchestra of strings and wind players, plus a 12-person choir – it still dazzles, although at this scale its imperfections also feel exposed.
There is a thinness to Pierce's songwriting: dwelling on his acrimonious split from the band's then keyboardist, Kate Radley, he seeks no complexity in his emotions. The affecting fragility of Broken Heart is undermined by the fact that what Pierce expresses is the lavish melancholy of Hollywood movies. In All of My Thoughts, Pierce luxuriates in his misery. And sometimes, that pleasure in pain becomes sadistic. Electricity is a screech of nerve-shredding noise, while the black screams in the seemingly interminable closer Cop Shoot Cop create the impression that hell has opened up. No wonder Pierce applauds the audience: we're passing an endurance test just by staying in our seats.
But at its best, the show offers a kind of transcendence. With its disjointed rhythm and odd texture, Stay With Me eschews sentimentality yet captures a lifetime of romantic experience. Initially woozy, I Think I'm in Love slowly envelops the audience in a pulsating, repetitive groove. When it ends, you feel exquisitely transported.
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