Now if you like Spiritualised, you are mental. Fact!


If you have seen the band live and enjoyed it more than any other gig, you are really mental. Fact! Why? Simply because Spiritualised are fecking mental. Fact!

They are like a soundtrack to some parallel world version of Born Free where it’s lions studying humans! Now that is fucked up - right? I have only ever seen the band play live once and I felt like I was part of some crazy cult:; I felt ill for days; and the songs were spinning round my head like a record where the needle just would not come off…

They are spacious, luscious, and plenty of other words I could come up with to describe them; they have such a sublime structure and delivery that is never equalled. Yes, we all know that Mercury Rev have tried, hell even Radiohead don’t do what Spiritualised do. If Pink Floyd had not happened then they would not exist, and perhaps they are the Floyd of the lost generation. Either way you have to be chilled to the bone, or on space station number 5 to really dig all their material, and if you are neither, then, yes you guessed it, you are mental. Fact!

I think they also have hints of the Velvet Underground about them, not in sound, but in the way they have influenced a whole new chapter. You can hear hints of Spiritualised in Coldplay, the Doves and many more, yet for all their influence they have never really become a household name, which I’m not sure is a good thing or not. But they certainly have a consistent quality about them that has to be admired.

The strangest thing about these two records is that although they are a collection of rare tracks, b-sides etc, and some of the tracks are over five minutes long; and they seem like they are part of a complete album; in fact even if you put one of these CDs in and press random, the songs still fit - now how fecked up is that?

Highlights are too many to mention; to pick certain tracks that standout would be detrimental to the others. But… my favourite track is Feel So Sad (Rhapsodies) which, at almost fourteen minutes long, sums up everything about the band in one song - if that was possible… If you play this song and love it, then you will like everything else on offer. And if you don’t, you won’t! In my view, the songs are all as strong as each other - a rare achievement in the music business; a band that consistently delivers first class songs, with the emphasis on monster melodies. This is a trip, and it’s one that’s a huge amount of fun to take.

So I am going now to roll a fat one, kick back, laugh at the reaper one more time… The Complete Works is really something you should own; if you don’t then how is your record collection complete?

Mine is.

4.5/5

Jj