Spiritualized

The man behind it all: J. Spaceman (Jason Pierce)

You've got to have some big balls to name your band Spiritualized. I mean, it's a lot to live up to - to name yourself after such an ethereal word ("spiritual") and more so to claim to forever be in the state of ("-ized"). However, since I heard their epic 1997 album, Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space, I knew that the band not only lived up to the name - but they deserved it. (Sidenote: For more info on my discovery of that album, please refer to my second blog post ever.) They do not tour that often, so when I heard they were playing at the Metro, I got my tickets the second they went on sale. Now, Spiritualized's music has always had the ability to take me to distant, dreamy landscapes in my head, but what I didn't expect was to be driven even further into those spaces simply via live performance. The "transportation" (we'll call it) started about halfway through the show when they began playing their trippy, all-instrumental 1995 track, "Electric Mainline," and carried on until the end of the show. It didn't hurt that the setlist just kept getting better and better - "Oh Baby," "Ladies and Gentlemen," and "Stay with Me" being the highlights for me. This is just one of those bands that I'd encourage everyone to see.