Wed. May 9

Welcome back Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce (aka Spaceman), whose 7th studio album "Sweet Heart Sweet Light" is another shimmering gem of velvet-y introspection, aggression, blues, soul and space-rock.  The band checks in at the Paradise Wednesday May 9. It didn't come easy, the album that is. Three was that near-death thing seven years ago. Pierce had double pneumonia in 2005 and it was a slow road to recovery, a process he touched upon on with great grace on the last album, "Songs In A&E.." But shortly after recording "Sweet Heart Sweet Light" – in far flung locales such as Los Angeles, Reykavik and Wales - Jason found himself weakened by a degenerative liver disease and was subjected to six months of chemo treatment, a procedure that left him virtually housebound while he mixed the album. (Pierce has long been known for his prodigious drug intake; he has mused, with typical dark humor, that he did a whole lot more drugs dealing with this situation - none of them however, fun.) In a classic case of triumph over tribulation, the resulting album is Spiritualized at their most vibrant; full voiced and utterly sublime. Rock and roll is the salve, the cure, if you will, and fans ill hear all of the epic grandioisity and gripping intimacy, as well as the earworm melodies for which they’re renowned, 

Here's an excerpt of a piece I wrote about Spiritualized back in 1997.
     Spiritualized has not been all over the radio, they have received loads of critical attention. The top English music weekly, NME, praised "Ladies and Gentlemen . . ." with this: "It's not yet summer but already the Album of the Year has landed on Earth." The New Yorker termed them "one of the best English bands you've never heard of."  The adventurous "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space" features long, dreamlike tracks. Spiritualized expanded to comprise 58 musicians. It includes the London Community Gospel Choir, the Balenescu Quartet, and New Orleans pianist Dr. John. There are droning guitars and synths. It's all a heady, pleasantly disorienting swirl.

"It doesn't lack in ambition," says Pierce. "I don't think any of our stuff has, actually. I don't see it as that special, as anything that anybody {else} can't do. People compromise too easily and they compromise for business {reasons}, like when it's a good `time' to release a record."

Spiritualized has certainly taken its time to make records. They debuted in 1992 with "Lazer Guided Melodies" and it was three years before they issued the follow-up, "Pure Phase." It was then another two years until "Ladies and Gentlemen . . . " saw the light. It took a long time to mix, and it was then delayed by a legal matter. Spiritualized had recorded a spooky, almost subliminal version of the 1962 Elvis Presley hit "Can't Help Falling in Love," written by George Weiss, Luigi Creatore, and Hugo Peretti. It was all ready to go, and then the band got word that the writer-publisher of the song refused to grant permission for its use. Spiritualized scrambled to revamp that part of the album.

"I don't understand what the deal was," says the sanguine Pierce, "but maybe if somebody came to me with a weird version of `Electricity,' maybe I wouldn't be too happy." Pierce actually prefers his own re-written substitute where, he says, it's like a "song written by a mad man as opposed to the other, which contains elements of stuff that's familiar."

Pierce founded Spiritualized after the 1991 dissolution of Spaceman 3, a revered minimalistic space-rock/trance group he co-led with Peter Kember, a.k.a. Sonic Boom, currently recording with Spectrum and E.A.R.

"Toward the end," says Pierce, "we became like some weird cabaret act where everyone was content to play `Revolution' twice a night and knew exactly what their reaction was going to be."

Spiritualized may be viewed as a space-rock/psychedelic band, but they shuffle a lot of elements into the mix. On "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space," they're spare and stripped-down, lush and full-bodied. They groove with R&B and are at home with strings. The music is sad and quiet at times, distorted, tortured, and full-bore at others. Ethereal and vicious. Dirge-like mantras mutate into something semi-sparkling. They close with a glorious 17-minute noise-fest called "Cop Shoot Cop."

There is an inescapable dark side, as well. There's a line about a messed-up boy, Jason, who "dulled the pain but killed the joy." Pierce works through some difficult, drugged-out, numbed-out scenarios. He pleads for "a little bit of love" to take the pain away. How close is Pierce to those emotions or characters?

"Well, I'm in there," he says, "but I'm trying to draw {songs} about relationships, like Tammy Wynette, who sings these glorious songs of heartbreak. It's writing about the highest highs and the lowest lows, rather than the mediocrity of life. I write about a broken heart with a smile on my face."

"There's actual humor, too," he suggests, "instead of out-and-out destitution. In the packaging, too." Indeed, the CD is packaged a la a prescription pill box, with dosage information and a warning the contents: "Keep out of the reach of children."

The core of Spiritualized's music -- which might be almost shocking to those steeped in post-modern irony -- is its soulfulness.

"That's what Jim Dickinson picked up on most," says Pierce, of the Nashville producer who worked with Pierce on the album. "I was discussing a lot of that with him -- talking about music that contains whatever that magic ingredient is. It doesn't have to be slick and it doesn't have to be that well-produced. It just has something to do with the human spirit, being able to lay down something that will move other people, and will in years to come."

"Hendrix doesn't sound like '60s music, and Spiritualized doesn't sound like '90s music. We aim above and beyond what we know we can do. Sometimes, in order to do that you ignore everything you know and are capable of doing."

Listen to "Hey Jane" here; http://soundcloud.com/spiritualized/hey-jane-eq-15feb-1

Tickets: $22. With Nikki Lane at 9.

967 Commonwealth Ave., 617-562-8800 www.thedise.com