9. Spiritualized - Songs in A&E

A brush with death would change most people. Emergency wards are downright terrifying, but it is in the process of healing where perspectives change, priorities realign and strength is found in second chance. Jason Pierce spent most of the last 5 years since Amazing Grace (considered largely mediocre and indicative of a bad case of writer's block) battling bilateral pneumonia, and the ordeal certainly colours the tone of Songs in A&E. Most interestingly, while much of the lyrics were written before he took ill, the music and recording were done after, and they impart their effect on the record: the Spiritualized sound has long been associated with self-indulgence, grandeur, and overwrought embellishments, but while these trademarks are still evident, the emphasis has clearly shifted to a beautiful message of renewal.
The Spaceman has rediscovered the value of subtlety; and it is in the unfolding of the quiet moodiness of acoustic guitars, the haunting pauses preambling the swooning crescendos, where he draws one closest to that calm, white world he resided between death and life, blissfully unaware of the maelstrom surrounding himself. Backing vocals float about Pierce's voice like a celestial choir, imbueing him with a newfound authority, while the melancholic strings that always used to suffocate his records take a gentle, lilting bow further in the mix. This joyful haze propagates into deliruim on the psychedelic rock tracks, where Pierce drops his usual sonic props with renewed vivacity. Fear, atonement, bitterness feature strongly on the album as well, but the presiding emotions appear very much to be jubilation and gratefulness.
Special mention goes to Soul on Fire, a moving tribute to the passion of life and easily one of the most inspired pop gems this year. The opening turn of phrase alone - "You were born on a black day / shot through with starlight", The Beach Boys would be proud - is worth the price of admission. "I've got a hurricane inside my veins / and I wanna stay forever". It's said that no artist's statement is worth more than the one most bare. This album is Pierce's most purposeful, vulnerable work, and it resounds with the redemptive music of healing.

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so goes the backing track of all the sighs we ever sighed