Spiritualized
– Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
Jason Pierce didn’t just make a breakup album—he made a cathedral of heartbreak. Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is where gospel meets narcotics, where space rock doesn’t float but drifts like a body on the tide. It’s love gone cosmic, pain translated into vibrations, and grief echoed through amp stacks and choir voices. You don’t casually listen to this album—you submit to it.
Best of…
What makes it remarkable isn’t the fusion of genres, though the cocktail of gospel, noise rock, free jazz, and blues is dizzying. It’s how Pierce stitches them together with emotional thread. There’s no irony here, no detached cool. It’s all-in sincerity—aching, bleeding sincerity. Even when the horns blare or the distortion kicks into overdrive, it all centers around a fragile, desperate plea: “I just want to be loved.” It’s both romantic and terrifying.
Clocking in at over 70 minutes, it’s a sprawling listen, but every second counts. The sequencing is as important as the content—it’s built like a spiral, not a line. Songs collapse into each other, bleed from euphoric highs into despairing lows. It’s not linear grief. It’s circular. Relapse, recovery, regret. Repeat.
Choice Tracks
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space
The title track starts like a lullaby written by someone who hasn’t slept in days. The original Elvis-sampling version is a love letter written in morphine script. It’s gentle, pleading, and so painfully direct you might miss how intricate it really is.
Come Together
Not a Beatles cover. This is raw swagger wrapped in walls of feedback. Pierce vents his fury with grinding guitars and distorted horns, like a funeral procession that caught fire halfway down the street.
Stay With Me
Here, the vulnerability is unbearable. A slow-motion hymn where every note feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. It’s not just a plea—it’s resignation wrapped in velvet.
I Think I’m in Love
It swings, it loops, it seduces. This one’s junkie romance at its most brutally honest. “I think I’m in love—probably just hungry.” Witty, deadpan, then back to sobbing. A perfect encapsulation of the album’s tug-of-war between euphoria and despair.
Broken Heart
If your soul has ever cracked, this is the sound it made. Orchestral and stripped bare at the same time. No metaphors, just pain stated plainly, like a confession in a cathedral that echoes back forever.
Cop Shoot Cop…
Seventeen minutes of cosmic desolation. Drums lurch, horns cry, guitars burn. It’s the end of the trip, the end of the rope, and maybe the start of something new—if there’s anything left of you.