• Spiritualized – And Nothing Hurt

    September 13, 2018 - By 

    Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt – Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce should not be with us. After nearly 30 years in the music industry, the man has gone through so many trials and tribulations that it really is a surprise for him to be alive, nevermind kicking. Heroin addiction, suicidal despair and and cancer are tough to manage on their own, but encountering all three in such a short space is dumbfounding. Yet through all this, he’s still managed to produce some truly staggeringly good work. With Spaceman 3, you’ve got The Perfect Prescription and Playing With…

  • Patti Smith, Spiritualized & Ariel Pink @ Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin

    June 3, 2015 - By 

    The last remnants of the Forbidden Fruit stages are being taken down. A few straggling food tents and vans are dotted around the edges of the field beside the obligatory Bulmers festival stands. And the rain is pouring down. It’s only through an organisational miracle that this gig is going ahead at all, really. What was originally meant to be an outdoors affair has instead been forced into two big tops, meaning that those who were lucky enough to secure tickets are tightly squeezed in. However, the lack of space in no way impacts on the energy at tonight’s triumvirate…

  • The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream

    March 20, 2014 - By 

    For myriad reasons, we are sadly unlikely ever to hear a collaboration between prime-period Bob Dylan and Jason Pierce’s Spiritualized at their peak. For one thing, the laws of space and time prevent it – the two acts’ greatest moments occurring some thirty years apart. Damn you, physics! Fans of imaginary musical dream-teams need not despair though, because we have the next best thing in the form of Lost In The Dream, the third album from Philadelphia’s finest pioneers of psychedelic, spaced-out Americana, The War On Drugs. There’s no two ways about it: frontman Adam Granduciel’s voice unmistakably recalls a…

  • Spiritualized @ National Concert Hall, Dublin

    August 15, 2013 - By 

    There was no small sense of anticipation in the run-up to this one. Not only did Spiritualized announce that they were playing their Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space album in its entirety, they were doing so in Dublin’s National Concert Hall with an orchestra, and it would be the only such performance of 2013. So, tickets were duly snapped up for what was a pretty low-key announcement, all things considered. As the more NCH-savvy members of the audience file in for the eight o’clock sharp start time, there is a palpable air of excitement in the ornate…