Saturday Live

Spiritualized offer a full on live experience, Jason at the microphone and with Fender guitar and a group of musicians- drummers, bassists, guitarists, keys, horns, strings, backing vocalists- capable of transforming the expansive sounds of his albums on stage, starting softly and quietly and building. This is a full performance from the end of August 2019, Spiritualized live at Nox Orae in Switzerland. 

The set opens with Hold On and then catches fire with Come Together, a reliable live favourite with Jason's story of Johnny and the ape who lives on his back. From then it's one after another- Shine A Light, Soul On Fire, She Kissed Me (And It felt Like A Hit)- Jason's cut and shut of guitar rock, drug addiction and gospel blues seeing us through to the end an hour an half later with Oh! Happy Day. Emotional and epic stuff. 

A lot has changed since the days of 2019. The album And Nothing Hurt came out the year before but it's follow up, Everything Was Beautiful, recorded at the same time and really sounding part of a whole rather than two separate records, was delayed until 2022 due to Covid and all that came with it. Jason's taking the band out again this autumn, a gig at Manchester's New Century Hall already in my diary. 

I've got quite a lot of Spiritualized live tracks on my hard drive. Here are three. First, I Think I'm In Love from the Royal Albert Hall in 1997, the band touring the then just released Ladies And Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space album that remains their high watermark, a version floating in on free jazz sax and discordant guitar, twelve minutes inside Jason's burning world- 'Sun so bright I'm nearly blind...' he coos with the choir singing softly behind him. It all kicks off later as you'd expect. 

I Think I'm In Love (Live at The Royal Albert Hall)

This is Soul On Fire live in Reykjavik in 2010, Jason on acoustic guitar, the strings and backing vocals swelling behind him.

Soul On Fire (Live in Reykjavik)

Finally, seventeen minutes of Spiritualized live at the Hultsfred festival in Sweden in 2002, bootlegged as an album titled Light Of The Sight Side, a run of three songs as one, overloaded fuzz guitar and frazzled psychedelic rock as standard.

Shine A Light/ All Of My Tears/ Electric Mainline