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Songs In A&E

by

Spiritualized

 
Songs In A&E
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Average: 4.0 (74 ratings)

Music from the deathbed: Songs of desperation, determination and salvation

  • We Say...

    Review by Douglas Wolk

    Jason Pierce's records, from his Spacemen 3 days onward, have always had a trinity of spirits hovering over them: drugs, death and God. This time, death is the one out in front: between the time most of these songs were written and when they were recorded, Pierce was hospitalized with double pneumonia and came close to dying. (The title isn't just a drone-rocker's two favorite chords, it's a reference to the British name for an emergency ward.) So, although the songs cover his usual emotional territory, it's his most mortal-sounding record to date — not just the way his voice often becomes a struggling rasp, but the pained scrape of his rhythms. (The closing waltz, "Goodnight Goodnight," doesn't just crawl from one note to the next, it ends with an allusion to Daniel Johnston's "Funeral Home.") The album's anchor, "Death Take Your Fiddle," underscores its dying-bed blues with the sound of a respirator.

    But Songs in A&E isn't a valediction, it's an exhausted sigh of relief at having survived. It's no accident that three songs with "fire" in their titles are clustered together, or that they're followed by two genuinely fiery rockers. Another Pierce specialty is the dramatic slow sweep across a landscape of sound, and there are a lot of those here too. "Baby I'm Just a Fool" reconfigures ideas from the Velvet Underground & Nico — both Lou's and Nico's songs — for five minutes before the grand horn section and sitar kick in. The six "Harmony" interludes (named after filmmaker Harmony Korine) are graceful, protean instrumental fragments that act as sorts of scene transitions for the album. "Take me to the other side," Pierce once sang; this time, he's reveling in still being in this world.

  • They Say...

    Review by Thom Jurek, All Music Guide

    Who would have thought that Jason Pierce's Spiritualized would have had any life in them after the rather uninspiring Amazing Grace in 2003? In the intervening five years, Pierce nearly died from double pneumonia. Near death experiences by their very nature are life-changing events. The music on Songs in A&E were recorded in that aftermath, but most of the album was written two years before he got sick; with so much of it about near death and survival, it feels like life imitating art. From the first notes of "Sweet Talk," it's obvious that a very different Spiritualized is up and about; an acoustic guitar, a sparse drum kit, the voice quartet, a few horns, and a minimal bassline fuel it. Pierce sweetly croons to a loved one in waltz time; his words are simultaneously appeasing and accusatory. The gospel chorus isn't as overblown as it was on Amazing Grace or Let It Come Down. They are in a support role, offering Pierce's reedy voice a fullness and authority it wouldn't have otherwise. The arrangement is lilting but powerful. How strange, then, the sounds of a ventilator that usher in the next track "Death Take Your Fiddle": "I think I'll drink myself into a coma/And I'll take every way out I can find/But morphine, codeine, Whisky, they won't alter/The way I feel/Now death is not around..."Death take your fiddle"/And play a song for me." Minor-key acoustic guitar and ghostly bass frame Pierce singing a mutant folk-blues that evokes Gary Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy." The backing vocals float wordlessly like death angels, hovering around the vocalist and giving the tune an otherworldly quality. But this isn't a song about dying; it's a song about coming close and cheating it; it's eerie. The proof? The next two tracks: "I Gotta Fire," and "Soul on Fire." The former is a taut, "Gimme Shelter"-esque rocker, the latter, a lush, uptempo love song. "Sitting on Fire" is a beautifully orchestrated love song: it's an admission of weakness and codependency but celebrates both of them at the same time: "Baby, I'm sitting on fire/but the flames put a hole in my heart/when we're together we stand so tall/But a part of me falls to the floor/Sets me free /I do believe it'll burn up in me for the rest of my life." Strings, vibes, marimbas, and drums crash in to the center of the mix carrying the protagonist into oblivion. "Yeah, Yeah" is a scorching rocker that feels like the Bad Seeds meeting the old Spacemen 3. "You Lie You Cheat," crashes in Velvets style with acoustic guitar and screeching feedback. The chorus sings atop a flailing drum kit, distorted strings, and wailing electric guitar. The marimbas and strings that power "Baby, I'm Just a Fool," sweetly underscore a very dark pop song, complete with "da-do-da-do-dat det-det-do's". It descends into beautifully textured chaos led by a loopy violin solo over seven minutes. Songs in A&E is the most consistent recording Spiritualized has issued since 1997's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. It contains the best elements of the band's signature sound, and paradoxically hedonistic yet utterly spiritual lyric themes. That said, newly focused energy, willfully restrained arrangements, and taut compositions give the set a sheer emotional power that no Spiritualized recording has ever displayed before, making it, quite possibly, their finest outing yet.

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