Spiritualized

It’s been nearly four years since the last Spiritualized LP, but just like Songs In A&E, the new Sweet Heart, Sweet Light arises from a situation not of Jason Pierce’s choosing. While A&E is named for the Royal London Hospital ward in which he was treated for a nasty, life-threatening bout of pneumonia, Sweet Heart was created during treatment for a degenerative liver disease, during which Pierce had to ingest an experimental drug cocktail that triggered sensations far from the chemical euphorias of his earlier work. There’s a morbid irony in the fact that a guy who came up making some of the druggiest music imaginable now has to push through his meds to get an album out. Sweet Heart is shot through with this sort of woozy awareness of mortality, draped in Pierce’s signature simple-yet-lush orchestrations.

Updated 04/20/2012