Spiritualized – Amazing Grace
(Sanctuary)

Uh what’s that? A new Spiritualized record, and it arrives without all the NME’s bombast? On Sanctuary! How quickly things change.
After 96-piece orchestra extravaganza Let It Come Down, Jason Pierce admittedly returns with a more subdued approach. Don’t worry, after all this is still a Spiritualized album, so expect gospel choruses (Oh Baby), garagey guitars (She Kissed Me), country ballads (Hold On) and the usual invocations to The Lord to be firmly in place. Which isn’t to say that surprises are completely gone, the dramatic The Ballad of Richie Lee for example, the Delta Blues tune disguised under the high voltage of Never Goin’Back, or the organ-tinged Cheapster, an obvious tribute to Bringing it All Back Home-era Bob Dylan.
So, nothing here is groundbreaking, as we leave the album wondering about Pierce’s old ability to reshape tradition and avantgarde into an unique style. This style now sounds ad a formula, and that leads us to the point: what’s next? Any future relevance for the man behind such masterpieces as Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space or Lazer Guided Melodies may now be in doubt, but this doesn’t mean at all that Amazing Grace is bad. Focusing strictly on present, you can’t deny that Spiritualized still deserve more than a spin.

Bernardo Cioci