ONE of the best bands you’ll ever commune with live should you get the chance, Spiritualized, are set to return in 2022 with a new album, Everything Was Beautiful, due for release in February on Bella Union. It’ll be their first in nearly four years (since 2018’s And Nothing Hurt).
They’ve also dropped a first single, the characteristically big, heartstring-tugging “Always Together With You” – Jason doesn’t depart from the entwined nexus of gospel, love, addiction and psych, and all the ways those elements correspond and interact; but when it is this lovely, he need not move beyond.
It’s a product of lockdown, this record, during which the reclusive Jason creatively thrived; “I felt like I’d been in training for this my whole life,” he says, explaining that he reframed the experience as a “beautiful solitude”.
He recounts walking through an empty London, where “even the sirens had stopped singing” and one “full of birdsong and strangeness and no contrails,” using the urban quietude to make sense of all the music playing in his head. The mixes of his new record, a ninth studio album, weren’t working out yet.
“There was so much information on [the new album, on which he alone contributes 16 different instruments] that the slightest move would unbalance it but going around in circles is important to me. Not like you’re spiralling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution, you hold onto the good each time.
“Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of … achieve. Well, you get there.”
Once more the artwork is designed by Mark Farrow and with a deliberate retreading of imagery, the vinyl pops out of a Braille-embossed pill box;. the box set edition has eight of them – literally a boxset.
“Farrow and I were talking about what we should do and we just said, ‘It’s called Everything Is Beautiful, how could you not have a pill?’”, Jason says.
Those tour dates are as follows:
Wednesday, March 2nd, Utrecht, Netherlandsm, TivoliVredenberg Grote Zaal (tickets);
Thursday, March 3rd, Copenhagen,DR Studie 2 (tickets);
Friday, March 4th, Oslo, Parkteatret (tickets);
Saturday, March 5th, Gothenburg, Pustervik (tickets);
Monday, March 7th, Berlin, Passionskirche;
Tuesday, March 8th, Hamburg, Laeiszhalle;
Wednesday, March 9th, Köln, Gloria;
Thursday, March 10th, Paris, La Gaîté Lyrique (tickets);
Friday, March 11th, Brussels, Ancienne Belgique (tickets);
Thursday, March 31st, Dallas, Texas, Granada Theater (tickets);
Friday, April 1st, Austin, Texas, Scoot Inn (tickets);
Sunday, April 3rd, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Meow Wolf (tickets);
Monday, April 4th, Denver, Ogden Theatre (tickets);
Tuesday, April 5th, Salt Lake City, Utah, The Commonwealth Room (tickets);
Thursday, April 7th, Seattle, Washington, Neptune (tickets);
Friday, April 8th, Portland, Oregon, Revolution Hall (tickets);
Saturday, April 9th, Vancouver, Commodore Ballroom (tickets);
Thursday, April 28th, Bath, The Forum (tickets);
Friday, April 29th, Cambridge, Corn Exchange (tickets);
Saturday, April 30th, Brighton, Dome (tickets);
Monday, May 2nd, Birmingham, Symphony Hall (tickets);
Wednesday, May 4th, Gateshead, SAGE (tickets);
Thursday, May 5th, Glasgow, SWG3 Galvanizers (tickets);
Saturday, May 7th, Dublin, Olympia Theatre (tickets);
Sunday, May 8th, Manchester, Bridgewater Hall (tickets);
Monday, May 9th, Nottingham, Royal Concert Hall (tickets) and
Tuesday, May 10th, London, Camden Roundhouse (tickets).
Spiritualized’s Everything Was Beautiful is due for release on February 25th via Bella Union and is available pre-order here.
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