the Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space poll

I await a another half-dozen Curve thread revivals.

Funny thing I remember about Curve then (other than just destroying everything in site) was Halliday looking like she was within seconds of punching out one of the on-stage sound guys.

GUHH I LOVE THE ELECTRIC MAINLINE EP SO MUCH!!! Had this absolutely greater-than-life experience this past summer when I was walking to meet someone for dinner, and it was about to rain and the sky was as dark as could be (to the point of being way eerie), but it was still totally dry and warm, and I was blasting "Electric Mainline" and it felt so surreal.

I may just go for the title track (esp. the original "Elvis" version)

No question. I love it so much.

i voted title track. parts of this album haven't aged well with me, but that one gets me every time.

I love the "Elvis" version of the title track too but I'm also a cheesy mf cuz I still love "Broken Heart"

Never gets better than the opening track.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Tuesday, March 9, 2010 8:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

uh, Geir OTM?

Pure Phase is their best studio LP & Royal Albert Hall live album is my overall favorite. Agree w/ Snrub & Elvis abaout the brilliance of FUI & the Medication EP too.

This is a really good one too fwiw. I just never really understood why this record was singled out so boldly. My take on it at the time was that it just that a lot of ppl just weren't paying attention to the S3/Sp/Sp aesthetic up until that point, for whatever reason.

Can anyone YSI 'Elvis' ver. of title track?

new edition actually uses Elvis version, supposedly

(pretty sure I first heard it YSIed here btw)

"Broken Heart". It's got one of those lyrics, the kind that people like M.Ward manage to knock out in their sleep, that is so simple yet affecting to the core.

n.b. this album has aged far worse than any Spz release up to and including LICD*

says og pre-adolescent spiritualized fan l0u1s jagg3r

Yes, this album is perfect - the live show last year was magnificent. Broken Heart was played at my dad's funeral (he was obsessed with this album during his illness), which makes it hard to listen to now, so I'll vote for the Elvis version of Ladies and Gentlemen instead.

I actually think Lazer Guided Melodies and especially Pure Phase sound A LOT more dated that Ladies and Gentlemen does now. In LGM's case it doesn't matter because the whole sound is so out-of-time in its own right. Pure Phase now sounds a bit empty and washy by comparison.

Anyway, it's between the title track, Broken Heart and Stay With Me for me. Plumped for Stay With Me in the end just because I played the hell out of that song for several months, something about the rising bassline.

I heard Electricity the other day and that one really has aged badly, largely because Pierce has been lazily rehashing it at least once on every album since.

i love the twangy guitar-y bits on this lp so 'stay with me' is a contendah. 'cop shoot cop' would be for the sublime last few minutes. but all the squally noise crap has to go. i don't mind guitar squall necessarily, but jp isn't actually that good at it -- cf most of 'electricity'.

i don't know/care if it's aged. I'VE aged so i can hardly fault the 1997 album 'ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space' for doing so.

"Cop Shoot Cop" because the squally noise crap has got some nice horns in it plus the ending wouldn't make sense without the middle plus well it's me

has got some nice horns in it

yeah tbh i have appreciated the noisey bits more since i got a better pair of cans dontchaknow.

nb dorian:

some nice horns in it
i love the twangy guitar-y bits

not for nothing, but this is the kind of in-depth musicological commentary that the friday guardian is sorely in need of

Feel totally "blah" about this album these days. It's not that it's aged badly or well, just that now I hear it as the sound of my once favourite band destroying everything I loved about them.

Not even sure I can be bothered to drag it out and re-listen, it'll just uspet me. I seem to recall being enamoured of Think I'm In Love once up on a time. If that's the one with the bassline I'm thinking of.

For a second I saw the talk of the Electric Mainline ep and thought "ooh, actually I like Medication..." then realised all the songs I was thinking of were on Pure Phase.

I feel like, in a way, a Spiritualized album that makes you feel strongly about it is a bad Spiritualized album. No challop.

I played it a lot back in the day.

I got a 'load' of the new 'version', played once, it's alright.

But boy! Has anybody slogged through the 'sessions' CD pack?

some nice horns in it
i love the twangy guitar-y bits

not for nothing, but this is the kind of in-depth musicological commentary that the friday guardian is sorely in need of

― the archetypal ghetto hustler (history mayne), Wednesday, March 10, 2010 10:41 AM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

Those are pretty much the kind of notes I make the first time I hear an album I'm reviewing.

Actually I think it's All Of My Thoughts.

And now I can stop listening to this album.

Thing is, most of the appeal of this album comes from the fact that the songs are so familiar. Yet if this album came out today, I don't think I'd buy it. Or listen to it more than once, if I had.

Actually, I couldn't even do more than a minute of Pure Phase, either, so it's probably just me. I just had to go and wash my ears with some bangin' techno or something. What on earth has happened to me? Sigh.

Trying to work out what there is about Ladies & Gentlemen that would seriously put off a fan of the first album, unless you don't want them to use any kind of arrangement other than crystal glass rim drone noises.

Voted I think I'm in Love, cos the first track seems to incomplete to win a poll, though I love it

Can you honestly not hear the difference?

It's like the difference between a sublime 85% pure chocolate bar and total overkill of chocolate AND CHERRY AND CARAMEL AND FUDGE AND NUTS AND FRUIT AND EVERYTHING SMOOSHED INTO the same space.

Part of what I love about the first album is the lightness of touch. How every note, every riff is in its right place, perfectly balanced, like you couldn't remove a single instrument without the whole thing falling down and not making sense. LAG... is just complete overkill of "well, if a single cello was good... A WHOLE 40 PIECE ORCHESTRA WILL BE EVEN BETTER!!!"

Also, as I've repeated often enough times, the rhythm section on the first album is one of my favourite rhythm sections of all time. So much of that album is driven from what's happening in the rhythm section, so many of the melodies are driven by the bass, the structure of the song kind of comes from the bottom up. LAG... just kind of plods where LGM soars.

Except there aren't any 40 piece orchestras on Ladies and Gentlemen, he's actually pretty restrained with the arrangements - the later Jason Pierce would have drenched that in orchestration but it's all very precise. Cool Waves is the only track that feels close to over-orchestrated to me.

the later Jason Pierce would have drenched that in orchestration but it's all very precise

I was talking about Broken Heart there, dunno where that bit went.

Voted Broken Heart, the way it slows down at the end is so....heart breaking!

Album is not perfect, but very meaningful for pre-blog indie (to use hro context). Kinda shocked this got a 10 to be honest they're just handing them out these days.

I agree with what I think Matt is saying: that LAGWAFIS gets tarred with the "over-indulgent" brush on account of where the band went later. The album strikes me as only marginally more orchestrated than Pure Phase (the truculent wispiness of which I still love), albeit much much more than LGM.

It's mostly string quartet or small brass section as I remember.

That "much much much more than LGM" is crucial, given that LGM is the only album I really still rate as any kind of "Great" album.

LGM is really the only SPZ ***** album. Pure Phase is good at about a **** but LAG... really is pretty much pushing to get above a ***.

well... i like it!

I really need to listen to this album again. At the moment, I can only remember the first two tracks and "Cop Shoot Cop" and, on basis of those recollections alone, I think it's amazing.

a)what is the best song

"I Think I'm in Love" -- maybe not the best, that's too difficult to say, but an early favorite on the album and one that gets stuck in my head all the time.

b)is this album perfect?

Yes.

The live performances of this in the UK this past winter were even better than the album. Ridiculously good in fact.

I really need to listen to this album again. At the moment, I can only remember the first two tracks and "Cop Shoot Cop" and, on basis of those recollections alone, I think it's amazing.

― we call him black Nev coz he's black & his names Neville (HI DERE), Wednesday, March 10, 2010 12:44 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

there is a pretty big section of the middle of this record that is forgettable

I Think I'm in Love is also the funniest track. People tend to get so wrapped up in the cosmic boo-hoo that they forget the humour of this album.

Yeah, voting that.

"Electricity" is way too obvious, I could have sung that song without ever having heard it before!

I Think I'm in Love is also the funniest track. People tend to get so wrapped up in the cosmic boo-hoo that they forget the humour of this album

Voting that as well and yeah you're right it's funny, although I'm struggling to find much humour anywhere else in this album.

All I meant was that there is some humour in the album, which critics tend to miss, not that it's wall-to-wall lols. There's a sense that he's poking fun at the self-indulgence of heartbreak even as he's wallowing in it, but it's certainly not the dominant tone.

Oh man so many good songs. So glad I saw them on this tour at a small club. It was epic.

Used to be my go-to make out record. I know, obvious. But also effective.

i've always thought the disney-ish 'stop your crying' etc had a comedy element

this one -- i can kind of see it now. not so much when i was a moody 17-y-o lol but yeah it's there

My gut is telling me to pick "I Think I'm In Love". If we could choose "Home of the Brave" and "The Individual" as one combined track then it'd be a tougher decision. "Stay With Me" is a darkhorse candidate.

I can't be bothered to sit through all of "Cop Shoot Cop" these days. It took me 10 years to realize that the final section, the part where they mellow out after the free jazz freakout, is the best part of the song.

"I have a broken heart/But I'm too busy to be heartbroken" strikes me as a witty line, especially when it turns out that all the pressing business he has to attend to is doing drugs.

all they "hey man" stuff in "cop shoot cop" is p tongue-in-cheek (or do i mean NEEDLE IN ARM amirite) imo. except it's a double irony coz he actually was a junkie.

lot of those lyrics are taken from 'sam stone' by john prine (eg "there's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes")

the two cds of demos etc are on spotify

they are not as good as the finished records - surprise

My brother was working for Vital distribution at the time, who Dedicated went through, and he had a chance to win one of the 12x3"CD pillboxes at a staff meeting, but missed out. He would've given it to me; I've still not quite forgiven him. He's actually got a framed silver disc of this somewhere because of how well it did.

I remember seeing this listed as being on the NME stereo for weeks and weeks and weeks in spring 1997, prior to its release. Think it finally came out in late May? Urban Hymns was late August/September, and I think OKC was June/July time. The three are definitely tied up in my mind, with this being the best (by some considerable distance).

Jeez, I really want a good recording of the full live Ladies and Gentlemen sets. Apparently there's a very high-quality recording form Oct 12, 2009 @ Royal Festival Hall--anyone heard this one or others?

Apparently there's a very high-quality recording form Oct 12, 2009 @ Royal Festival Hall

yep, this is on dime and sounds great. taper was sitting in one of the fancy boxes they have so crowd noise is thankfully minimized.

Will definitely pick it up. I'd love some good Spz recordings but all the ones I've heard were Acoustic ZZZZZZZZZlines ones or just really mellow (like the Royal Albert Hall discs). Recommendations welcome!

I agree with Tim F's analysis except for Be Here Now, which represented the death of one phase rather than a bridge to another. I remember OK Computer, L&G and Urban Hymns being the big, serious post-Britpop triumvirate, leading to many strained references to the impact of Princess Diana's death, the 9/11 of its day for critics looking for real-world ballast in their reviews.

I loved that one-a-year run of L&G, Deserter's Songs and The Soft Bulletin. I got to thinking that every year there'd be another game-changing classic from a group of underappreciated indie veterans.

Chems mix deserves a YouTube embed. Lovelovelove the bit at 5:07 where Pierce appears just so the drums can kick in on the word "falling".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ8bfsL-awY

i've till got the blisterpack, like wrapping for a giant pill, and the advisory sheet on taking your medication

bassline on 'come together' is still sick, that bubbling ebbing descending bottoming out over and over

All the hating on the mad guitar squall in "Cop Shoot Cop" itt makes me want to throw things.

ladies and gentleman we are talking bollocks in space

this is like the fucking best thing tbh

not Hawkwind level best thing but best thing these kids did

in that general soupy sea of drone/snore/shleep/drugs endlessness

Christ has this album aged well.

no idea why it was reissued in 2010 tbh

To get the proper version of the title track on it.

I did get that twelve disc version, one was missing so it was a tenner.

'All of my thoughts"' is about a minute longer.

Y'know, I still think this record is easily as good as OK Computer, and felt just as ambitious as that record even at the time. It's a superior "break-up record" to Blur's 13 too, IMO.

Remember when they won that Brit award, and Kate left her table where she was sitting with The Verve to go up with Jason and the rest of the band, smile, and then went back to her table again?

Shortest band reunion ever.

No, I don't! Did that even happen? I can't remember Spiritualized being nominated for a Brit in 1997/1998. I know The Verve definitely were.

Looked it up, it was the NME awards, back when they got televised I guess.

Ah, right! Yeah, that makes sense... NME put this record ahead of OK Computer in their EOY list, iirc!

Shortest band reunion ever.

The Fatboy Slim tape off the front of the already-split Kate / Jason LAGWAFIS NME cover still holds up imo

It's been almost 20 years, month for month, and against all odds I now enjoy this album far more than I used to. It has… aged well?

Best album packaging ever.

The packaging hasn't aged as well as the album, mine is in tatters.

Was gonna say, mine's completely knackered too.

Same. Squashed and warped to buggery.