Complaining that 12-hour days were driving him "stir crazy" he spoke of the difficulty of making a record. And it's true that Pierce has given this one his all. Between the velvety Spacemen 3 sound that preceded shoegaze, his many collaborations (Yoko Ono, BRMC, Harmony Korine, Ariel Pink) and Spiritualized, he had the time to hear his heart stop twice in 2005, following a bout of Hepatitis C. Twenty years earlier, after two albums, the Englishman had struck the world with the instrumental fusillade Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space – compared to Radiohead's OK Computer, it opened the way for Spiritualized's success.
Since then, the band, with its shifting line-up and blend of psychedelic rock, prog, space rock and noise, has brought out four albums, including 2002's breakthrough Sweet Heart, Sweet Light, while Pierce was undergoing chemo. The tracks gave witness to the presence of drugs other than heroin in his blood stream that he "wouldn't recommend to anyone." And then, six years. Today, And Nothing Hurt is a prologue. The recipe is the same. For this intimate, unblinking odyssey which he recorded at home, Jason Pierce moves expertly between strings, sax, guitars, wild cosmic melodies (Here It Comes, On The Sunshine, The Morning After) and scorched lyric ballads (I’m Your Man, Damaged, The Prize) until the morse code goodbyes of Sail On Through. A deranged astronaut with a fine discography who will be missed.
Spiritualized - I’m Your Man
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