Pick the Cat's Eyes Out

I don't plan on making a habit of this, but a message board post I made warrants repeating here. At least, my ever-loving Jason Pierce fanboy-self thinks so . . .

Spiritualized, Songs in A&E

Not in line with earlier efforts, but not Amazing Grace either. Of course, I've long been on board with Jason Pierce helping to soundtrack the rest of my life (at least until one of us croaks; my money is on me going first), so my opinion may not be all that valid.

In some sense, it's a continuation of Let it Come Down. Only, in the way that album was regarded as some sort of "aftermath" (hear: "Out of Sight," "The Twelve Steps," "The Straight and the Narrow"), this is the "aftermath" to the "aftermath." I remember a story where Pierce mentioned the title to Let it Come Down was taken from Macbeth: Banquo saying, "It will be rain tonight" and the response being, "Then let the rain come down." (I think he later rescinded that derivation in the same interview.) Well, Songs in A&E exists in the period after the rain has fallen and collected in pools and then evaporated.

Maybe it's all the song titles employing the word "fire," but for the first time, I'm feeling . . . I don't know, consequence in a Jason Pierce record. He's never blushed when talking about his drug habit, but here I feel like rather than talking about his nadir being an infrequent habit of taking his breakfast right off of a mirror, the lowpoint is the ultimate physical ruin: comas and scars and actual, real-live death. Old age bring such keen perspective, of course; I just never expected to hear it in someone who's expounded so freely about the stimulants he's indulged in. In some ways, I considered him forever lost, but I suppose this proves that even the most indulgent can be rescued.

Pierce has already had his "break-up" album and his "rehab" album. I'm not sure what this one will be lazily labeled as. But listening to it again, the moniker "spiritualized" never sounded so apt.