Hammersmith Apollo,London
By turns poignant and defiant, the soulful rock’n’roll wastrel Jason Pierce turns up the feedback and faces down his mortality – flanked by a horn section and a gospel choirThe air of all-too-keenly felt mortality that coils throughout Spiritualized’s latest album, or And Nothing harm,is no mere affectation. Once the seemingly invincible leader of Spacemen 3 – drone-rock hedonists who proudly “took drugs to make music to seize drugs to – Spiritualized major-domo Jason Pierce has of late weathered near-fatal bouts of liver disease and double pneumonia. He has even intimated that And Nothing harm marks a final hurrah for the group.
So when he walks on stage in darkness following after the rest of his five-piece band, full string and horn sections, and a tympanist and a gospel choir – takes a seat stage-fair,hunches over his guitar in front of a music stand and croaks a mournful Hold On in a voice frail and sunken, it is hard not to fear that tonight we are witnessing his final throes. The lyrics underscore the elegiac tenor: “Hold on to those you hold dear. Death cannot seize what you’ve already lost.” Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com