In previous years Reverberations conducted a marathon, day by day, countdown of the top 25 albums from the waning year. This year we will take a bit less ambitious approach, chronicling only the top 10 releases of 2012. In January, in addition to reviews of brand spanking new music, we will also make occasion to reflect on some of the year's other fine recordings.
For our top 10 countdown, many of these selections will have been covered previously in Reverberations, in which event we will simply link you to the earlier review. A few of these, however, will require new reviews.
THIS IS A PREVIOUS REVIEW ... OF OUR NO. 1 ALBUM (TIE) FOR 2012.
SPIRITUALIZED - SWEET HEART SWEET LIGHT (FAT POSSUM RECORDS)
The drone and rush of Spacemen 3 was
dark, dirty fun. Like the Jesus and Mary Chain they brought a dash of
demi-monde cool to the synth-pop Eighties. When they broke up, guitarist Jason
Pierce initiated a new project called Spiritualized, a band who didn’t reject
Spacemen’s ethos, but certainly gave it grander dimensions.
Pierce has woven strands of Velvet
Underground ‘rush and
on my run’ thrust,
lysergic propulsion (think 13th Floor Elevators, and yes, even Pink
Floyd), the epic pop pretensions of Phil Spector, and American gospel sounds
throughout Spiritualized’s twenty-year history. The band’s apotheosis, Ladies and Gentleman We Are Floating in
Space, a classic statement of Pierce’s vision was released in 1997.
Subsequent releases have to varying degrees retreated from or refined that
classic. Good records, all of them in my estimation, but nothing stunning
After 2008’s Songs in A and E, Pierce revisited Ladies and Gentleman, mounting extravagant live productions of the
album. Immersed in his own classic and moved by audience response, Pierce
determined that any new release from Spiritualized had to meet that standard. With
Sweet Heart Sweet Light his mission
is accomplished. It embraces Ladies and
Gentlemen, but deepens and matures its sensibility.
Where some of the band’s recordings
hid behind a patina of noise and attitude, Sweet
Heart is transparently detailed, achieving a clarity of pop production that
would flatter halcyon period Beach Boys or the Beatles circa Magical Mystery Tour.
With Pierce undergoing chemotherapy
as treatment for liver disease, most of the basic tracks for Sweet Heart were
cut in his home studio with a core quartet of Pierce, guitarist/bassist Tony
Foster, keyboardist Tom Edwards, and drummer Kevin Bales. Pierce then convened
sessions in Iceland (for orchestration) and Los Angeles (backing vocals).
Pierce addresses the ecstasies and
depths of self-medication and pharmaceutical exploration, the glory and grime
of love, outsider chic and ambiguity-haunted spiritual (soul) searching. Sweet Heart - every ragged,
propulsive guitar strum, every blast of horns, swell of strings and massed
choir moment, expansively and perfectly encapsulates the Jason Pierce vision. He
may have modest vocal and instrumental talents, but he and his band mates
perform with absolute conviction and Pierce’s painstaking, perfectionist
production gives these tracks a rugged glory that’s positively pop epic.
Pierce’s shaggy dog vocals have the ragged
rightness of vintage Lou Reed, and the sleepy, disheveled quality of Nikki
Sudden singing the Beach Boys’ Smile. There’s a
just right mix of pain, exultation, sentiment, and sarcasm in his delivery.
Pierce sounds resolved, conflicted, pained and triumphant; again proving that a
great rock ‘n’ roll singer doesn’t need a great voice.
The
Reed/Velvets influence is pervasive, right down to the mirroring in the title
(Sweet Heart Sweet Light / White Light White Heat). And ‘Hey Jane’ not only
alludes to “Sweet Jane,” but refers directly to the song in the lyric. There’s
also a touch of “Search and Destroy” (Iggy and the Stooges – Raw Power) in the
lyric’s “ain’t got time” insistence. It’s a massive burner of a performance –
spare, convulsive, undeniable. Pierce’s resolute ambivalence is in full sway,
Jane herself being both reviled and doted on. Of course ultimately this rock
‘n’ roll obsessed vixen is exactly what the conflicted singer wants, as the
coda rocks out with Pierce singing “sweet heart, love of my life.” Well, who
said girls were … easy?
Living
fully is living with risk of pain, and in “Little Girl” Pierce opens singing
“sometimes I wish that I was dead, ‘cos only the living can feel the pain.” It,
like the gospel pleader “Life is a Problem,” is a narcotic soul ballad, the
sort of cover some wunderkind producer would present to a soul stirrer like
Arthur Alexander were he still with us (he’d record for Anti, maybe produced by
Joe Henry?). But where “Hey Jane” is finally exultant and “Little Girl and
“Life is a Problem” poised, “Get What You Deserve,” is a droning, insistent
scorched earth of vengeance and rejection. It’s evinces Zep’s “Kashmir” and
evokes George Harrison’s Indian modalities. It’s sweeping, but you feel dirty
and drained when it’s done.
Love is a
beloved dog (from hell) on “Too Late.” It has a graceful melody that could take
wings with a more sumptuously gifted singer, but it couldn’t ring any truer
than coming from its composer. Dr. John, who also contributed to Ladies and Gentlemen, co-writes the soul
burner “I Am What I Am.” Carried by a catchy bass line drafted from Marvin
Gaye’s “Inner City Blues,” the song somehow combines the Doctor’s swampy
voodoo, Gaye’s sultry funk, and Pierce’s own drone-rock relentlessness.
Pierce’s
appeals to divinity are not the product of devotion to anything but the well of
feeling which rock’s musical and literary sources provide. His songs are part
plain statement, rooted in autobiography, but also allegory. Nowhere is this
better expressed than in the album’s closing track “So Long You Pretty Thing” (co-written
with nine year-old daughter, Poppy.) Beyond it’s titular nod to Bowie’s “Oh You
Pretty Things,” it sets up an ultimate soul-wrestle between desperation and
deliverance, complete with appeals to ‘the Lord’ and ‘Jesus.’ As the song stirs
to a climax he seems to be serenading not only a loved one, but also himself -
“So Long You Pretty Thing. God save
your little soul. The music that you played so hard ain’t on the radio. And all
your dreams of diamond rings. And all that rock and roll can bring you. Sail
on. So Long.”
There’s a
lot condensed into that lyric; Pierce references the gap between his
vision of rock glory and what’s ‘on the radio,’ but his faith in “all that rock
and roll can bring” is undaunted. A hymn to resistance more than resignation,
it’s an instant classic in Pierce’s rock radio of the mind, and as it rises in
intensity it achieves a revivalist fervor that warms any rock ‘n’ roll
believers heart. Some records are simple collections of songs. Sweet Heart is a
journey into the heart of Jason Pierce’s darkness. And out – into the pure
white light of what happens when that perfect rock ‘n’ roll buzz strikes. There may be other records as good as Sweet Heart Sweet Light released in 2012, but I doubt any will be better.
Reverberating: 9.4
