Spiritualized have spent 2021 reissuing their first four albums and the last of those, 2001's Let it Come Down, will be out October 22 via Fat Possum. You can pre-order it on ivory vinyl in the BV shop.
The album was a bit different than the three that preceded it, in that it was largely orchestral with less of a reliance on Pierce's signature drone, making use of every instrument imaginable, not to mention a choir. "It’s a funny record to me because in a way it’s so conventional but it’s got some of our most sublime moments," says Pierce. "A lot of people say Ladies & Gentlemen is where it happened because it’s when they first got aboard, found out about this band. But people who got into it through Let It Come Down are as passionate about that album and then moved backwards to find the stuff that came before it. Some of it had ideas that didn’t quite hit but when it does hit, it’s way beyond where I thought it was gonna go; it’s got these extraordinary parts that I don’t think I could get anywhere near again."
You can watch the newly remastered video for "Do it All Over Again," read more on the album from Pierce, and listen to the whole album, below.
The new Let it Come Down reissue comes in a gatefold jacket with reworked artwork by Mark Farrow and is pressed on limited edition ivory-coloured vinyl. Preorder that and pick up the three other Spiritualized vinyl reissues -- Lazer Guided Melodies, Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and Pure Phase -- in out shop.
Spiritualized will release a new album in 2022. Stay tuned for details on that.
Jason Pierce on Let it Come Down:
It all fell apart a little bit during this period. With Ladies & Gentlemen we had everything. We had Kate on keyboards, John on guitar, Damon (Reece) and Sean (Cook) on drums and bass and everything seemed to find its space in a beautiful way and then that fell apart. It just wasn’t there any more - the politics of being in a band. So, I was trying to build something out of that.
I recorded demos for these tracks at John’s studio again. And it was just putting all these parts together, writing for instruments I’d never written for before, the basslines, the flutes and the French horns and I’d never done that. Changing instruments around so I would try the bass playing the flute parts or vice versa. So when it came to actually making the record it was like ‘well, all we need to do now is replicate those on the real instruments’ which is kind of what we did; an amazing time at Air Studios where we pulled in every instrument under the sun. Bass strings, bass clarinets, ten trombones. And I remember talking to Dr John again and he said: ‘Nobody ever stopped to say how many you SHOULD have in a section?’ because there IS no ten trombones. There is no section like that.
It’s a funny record to me because in a way it’s so conventional but it’s got some of our most sublime moments. A lot of people say Ladies & Gentlemen is where it happened because it’s when they first got aboard, found out about this band. But people who got into it through Let It Come Down are as passionate about that album and then moved backwards to find the stuff that came before it. Some of it had ideas that didn’t quite hit but when it does hit, it’s way beyond where I thought it was gonna go; it’s got these extraordinary parts that I don’t think I could get anywhere near again.
We were the best band when we ran at ‘we can’t really fucking afford this but let’s do it anyway’. I still think that if it’s gonna fail, it’s gotta fail big. And that’s ok. I still feel like that.
Let It Come Down:
On Fire
Do It All Over Again
Don't Just Do Something
Out Of Sight
The Twelve Steps
The Straight and Narrow
I Didn't Mean To Hurt You
Stop Your Crying
Anything More
Won't Get To Heaven (The State I'm In)
Lord Can You Hear Me
