“Hey Jane” recorded at the Royal Albert Hall, October 11^th 2011

A couple of weeks ago Spiritualized visited the Queen’s Hall in Edinburgh, ready to promote a new album already delayed until next spring. Most of the scheduled tour dates have been postponed until March, but us Scots were lucky to avoid such a fate. I bought my pint to the strains of Malcolm Mooney-era Can on the PA and got comfy in the Upper Circle. Eventually Spiritualized filed onstage – Jason Spaceman stage right, sitting on an office chair facing the band; Doggen and John Coxon on guitar; two anonymous figures on bass and keyboards (sorry for not knowing your names, skilled musicians!), Kevlar Bales on drums and two gospel singers as backup. My palms were sweating with anticipation. Yes, I’m a confirmed Spiritualized acolyte, and I was ready to accept anything the Spaceman threw my way.

I wasn’t expecting this, though.

So what did Jason serve up? Only his entire fucking new album presumably played from start to finish: 70 minutes of unheard music without nary a ‘hello’ or a song introduction to help us out. OK, a lack of crowd interaction is to be expected from Jason, but serving up the unexpected is not the usual Spaceman way. It was a dangerous move, but it worked. The drunken Edinburgh crowds have always adored Jason, and their limitless enthusiasm (“Mon’ the Spaceman!” is a typical cry at a north-of-the-border Spiritualized concert) helped everyone through this occasionally demanding experience.

The first song – “Hey Jane” according to camera-phone snaps of the set list – was astonishing, easily the best thing Jason has penned since the mid-nineties. It starts off innocuously enough with a driving riff pinched from the MC5’s “Black To Comm” (thanks to Runcible on the Spiritualized forum for pointing this one out) and degenerates into the usual freeform noise wigout Jason loves so much. But then, oh my word, it coalesced into this eleven-minute long motorik Stereolab-esque groove monster with perfectly intertwining lead guitar and choir lines, Jason all the while singing about “Sweet Jane” being played on the radio and exclaiming “sweetheart, sweetheart, love of my life”. It blew everybody away.

The rest of the new songs couldn’t live up to “Hey Jane”, but that’s no insult or faint praise. “You Get What You Deserve” started off like “Electric Mainline” but mutated into a lurching, bass-heavy morality tale; “Heading For The Top” featured some batshit insane lead guitar from Doggen and some Can-inspired lyrics; “I Am What I Am” took the words from an unreleased song recorded for a 1998 radio session and shoehorned them into a dark, funky, Dr John-esque voodoo jam. And the last song, possibly called “So Long”, typified the uplifting, borderline-trite gospel pop Jason has become so good at these days.

Any issues with the new material? Yep: over familiarity, mainly. I cheered at least two songs thinking they’d started playing “Lord Can You Hear Me?” only to be encountered with something different. We all love D, A and G, but Jason, honestly: there are other chords out there. “Too Late” was far too blatant a rewrite of “Lord Let It Rain On Me” for my liking; “Won’t Get To Heaven” (formerly known as “Life Is A Problem”) was rather dull, but better than its original incarnation played on their 2008 tour. “So Long”’s admittedly excellent chorus lost impact after four bludgeoning minutes of “Stop Your Crying / Soul on Fire” (or “All Around the World”, if you’re feeling particularly cruel) style repetition. Yes, Jason is still singing about the Lord and fire and “going down” like they’ve never gone out of fashion; some of the lyrics ain’t really up to scratch and he’s far more adept at psychedelic noise than country balladry. These are minor quibbles, though. We were treated to perhaps the world premiere of the new Spiritualized album, and overall it was awesome. How many other bands could get away with that? But really, -no- old songs? Spaceman, don’t be cruel!

He didn’t let us down: a six-song, forty-five minute encore brought us back to earth and catapulted us into space at the same time. “Sway”, “Shine A Light”, “Cheapster”, “Good Times”, “Take Me To The Other Side” and “Oh Happy Day” gave us the ethereal, melodic, atonal, muscular Spiritualized experience we all know and love. The evening wasn’t about nostalgia, though. Jason had shared his vision of the future with us, and it was good. At the end he stood up, faced us for the first time and applauded us all with a grin so infectious you couldn’t help but smile in return. Roll on next March.

Song titles etc gleaned from the wonderfully informative folks on the official Spiritualized forum.