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Spiritualized's Jason Pierce on touring, 'Amazing Grace' rerelease and modern music

Mike Palm
| Monday, November 6, 2023 9:05 a.m.
Courtesy of William Seldon
Spiritualized, fronted by Jason Pierce, will play on Nov. 9, 2023, at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale.

Jason Pierce, the mastermind behind the English band Spiritualized, doesn’t quite know how many years of touring he has in him.

“It’s hard to say, isn’t it?” Pierce said with laugh in a phone call from London earlier this week. “I think as long as we’re as good as we can be, that’s the key with the lack of the albums. It seems like modern rock ‘n’ roll, modern music can live long beyond its sell-by date. And that seems really unfortunate — I mean not a good place to be — so it felt like the pressure to put music out that’s deeply relevant and the shows reflect that, it just puts more pressure on anything. That’s a good thing, right, isn’t it, that puts pressure to make it better?

“I think once it stops being the case and it becomes a kind of battle reenactment or kind of just doing it because it existed once in a better form, doesn’t seem like anywhere you’d want to head to fast.”

In the meantime, Spiritualized is hitting the road for a week of East Coast shows, including a Nov. 9 stop at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, before heading out west to open for Queens of the Stone Age in December.

Spiritualized formed in 1990 from the ashes of English neo-psychedelia rockers Spacemen 3. They’ve released nine studio albums, most notably “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space,” which was released to critical acclaim in 1997.

Their latest album, “Everything Was Beautiful,” came out April 22, 2022, following 2018’s “And Nothing Hurt.” The gaps in between albums served a purpose, as Pierce made sure the albums were up to snuff.

“There’s a reason for it to be out rather than just a reminder that we exist and to buy the back catalog because it’s better,” he said. “…I spent a lot of time putting those records, the last two records, together and I felt like they had to, there was an added pressure, they had to be really something else to be releasable.

“And to play them live, you know, there had to be a reason for it. I guess that’s the other thing though: a lot of new music is a means to get on the road and play old music. And I just didn’t want to be that. I wanted to put out records that felt like this is worth seeing. This is something else and has some kind of standing and says something about where I am now, you know, that is relevant.”

A 20th anniversary vinyl rerelease of 2003’s “Amazing Grace” is slated for Jan. 19, 2024. The Spaceman Reissue Program — Pierce often goes by J. Spaceman — launched in 2021 with the vinyl releases of Spiritualized’s first four albums, sparked in part by the ever-rising prices of the original releases.

“‘Amazing Grace’ was recorded and made quite fast for me. I like to sort of test all the possibilities,” Pierce said. “That record came on the back of two albums where all the possibilities have been tested and tested again so there’s a real thing about making something that was very live and very immediate.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Pierce said there isn’t anything he’d change about that album, adding he isn’t a big fan of “remastering, you know, re-changing, re-whatever” in order to chase what’s currently fashionable.

“I think that’s the deal with making records though. I think there’s so much sort of, you’ve got to follow up on success, you’ve got to put this out quick, you’ve got to hit the new record while the going’s good kind of thing,” he said. “And I don’t live in that world. I just feel like you put the record out when you’ve got it down as you want it. And so they all come with very, very tiny regret or no regrets.”

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Pierce said new music could be in the works next year, but the coming month of shows remains the priority at the moment. (“Europe’s been a mess, so it feels like every show is a bit of a luxury anymore,” he said.) And after all these years, the songwriting process hasn’t gotten any easier.

“I think it gets more difficult. I don’t know why. Maybe because you’re fighting yourself as well,” he said. “It’s hard not to repeat. It’s not hard to find yourself doing things you’ve done before, not deliberately, not to set it up like that, but just finding, ‘I’ve done that. I’ve already done that.’ To find some kind of new way of pushing it outwards.

“And like anything, it just takes time. I think that’s the other thing I’ve suggested before, the music business doesn’t allow for time. That’s where it kind of keeps things rolling, keeps it coming. You know, you get your one moment to find the real gems and the real moments, it just takes time and exploring the possibilities, seeing where it should go, to actually find out where it shouldn’t go as much as where it should go.”


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