Spirtualized

Spiritualized are the latest in that glorious lineage of rock bands who take avant-garde ideas and turn them in to gorgeous pop eg. Velvet Underground, fusing John Cage and Phil Spector in to the Wall of Noise, or the Byrds drawing on the ideas of John Coltrane and India Raga for ‘Eight Miles High’. While terms like ‘psychedelic’ have been bandied about to describe them, the band’s sound is more slippery than that with influences as diverse as minimalist composer LaMonte Young and the Beach Boys. As Jason says “A lot of people who work with minimal music get very highbrow … it’s easy to be an avant-garde band, but not so easy to turn it into pop that moves people emotionally … we aim to make people feel things on a more basic, more soulful level … we want to make music that means something to the people that hear it.” And probably, above all else, is Jason’s firm belief that honesty is the key to everything Spiritualized do musically … both in the studio and live.

So what are Spiritualized? Jason understands that their aesthetic obliqueness may sometimes lose the casual listener, but insists that when all is said and done, “Spiritualized are carrying on the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll, not creating high art.” Whether from reading interviews in the press or watching the exclusive interview footage in this site, you will know that Jason has classified the band’s music and attitude as soul, blues and, even on occasion, jazz, not to mention the obvious categories of pop and rock ‘n’ roll. In the end, Spiritualized are simply great music, music that’s fluent in what Van Morrison called ‘the inarticulate speech of heart,’ music that effortlessly dissolves any category.