Amazing Grace

Spiritualized

Released on 08/09/2003 by Fat Possum
Main artists: Spiritualized
Genre: Alternative & Indie

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Amazing Grace opens on a decidedly ungraceful note: a piercing alarm tone is the first sound one hears on the album, setting the stage for a record that is unsettled and unsettling. Released just two years after Let It Come Down (which took Jason Pierce four years to write and record), Amazing Grace has a loose and organic immediacy to it, which can be ascribed both to the fact that it was recorded in just three weeks and that Pierce was clearly battling his own personal and physical challenges at the time. (He would be hospitalized following the touring that accompanied the album.) While his voice is in somewhat ragged form, it's an appropriate accompaniment for the material, which bristles with a kinetic and raw energy, steeped in the blues, soul, and back-to-basics rock that Pierce had previously submerged in cosmic psychedelia. The same riffs emerge over and over again, and when Pierce leans on orchestration, gospel choruses, or psychedelia, he does so in the most fundamental ways. The title track reconfigures the traditional hymn into an epic that is both sprawling in scope and charged in atmosphere, rendering it in a fashion that is emotionally raw and spiritually honest. Likewise, "Lord Let It Rain On Me" is a poignant reflection on vulnerability and the search for solace, with a stripped-down arrangement that allows the emotional weight of the lyrics to take center stage; it showcases the band's ability to deliver complex combinations of emotions in a way that is both sincere and startlingly effective. "The Ballad of Richie Lee" is a haunting and melancholic track dedicated to the late bassist/vocalist of L.A. slowcore band Acetone. Sparse instrumentation and haunting melodies create a somber yet beautiful atmosphere. Surely, while the two bands toured together, Pierce saw the storm of mental health issues and drug use that led to Lee's suicide (and probably saw more than a little of himself in Lee), and this song is both an homage to Lee as a person, as well as a meditation on loss and the impact of addiction. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz

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Amazing Grace

Spiritualized

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