Spiritualized: Let It Come Down : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Jason Pierce has made a career of defying expectations. After making his name as the bass man for the great U.K. trance rockers Spacemen 3, he surprised everyone by rebounding strong with his own band, Spiritualized. But when Spiritualized seemed to have settled into their own pleasantly stagnant psychedelic groove, Pierce shook it all up with the 1997 epic Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,a true masterpiece of cool waves and interstellar guitar. Ladies and Gentlemensounded like a glorious fluke, but four years later, with a mostly different band, Pierce is back with Let It Come Down, a similar-minded album of chill-out rock. Nothing matches Ladies and Gentlemen's high points in terms of sonics or songwriting, but Spiritualized still have that big sound: sweeping gospel choruses, piano, strings, horns, guitar freakouts and Pierce's lonely voice crying out for a shot of love to take the pain away. With expansive ballads like "Don't Just Do Something," "The Straight and the Narrow" and the ten-minute "You Won't Get to Heaven," Let It Come Down comes on like Side Three of Exile on Main Street with Keith on vocals and Brian Wilson conducting the orchestra.

ROB SHEFFIELD
(RS 881 - November 8, 2001)