Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light (CD, Double vinyl LP)

Think you know what to expect from Spiritualized by now? Well, you'd be right! Yup, the English band with the American spelling are back with a new platter of their ambitious indie-psych-pop-gospel-drug music packed with 11 cuts that sound just like Spiritualized. Actually, they're on a poppier trip with this outing than they've been on for a while, but there's still plenty of the wacked out drugginess you're thirsty for too. The album's first single 'Hey Jane' (not a Motorpsycho cover, sadly) opens up proceedings but has a whole long repetitive psych-kraut build-up passage tagged on which is all bright and gospelly towards the end and drags the piece out to a good nine minutes or so. That's followed by a downbeat early Bee Gees-ish bit of psych pop with sweeping strings. And then matters continue along this epic pop route for another eight songs. It's hardly upbeat (sample song titles: 'Get What You Deserve', 'Life is a Problem'...) but by their standards it's a positively optimistic-sounding record, there's some scrappy BJM vibes in places, less meandering defeated-sounding smack jams, more focused melodies...even though it's all unmistakeably following the Spiritualized sonic template there's a lightness of spirit that many of their previous records have struggled to muster, making for a breezy and laid-back experience more in tune with early psychedelic folkpop vibes of the '60s and drifting comfortably further from the maudlin self-indulgence that has muddied some of their other work. Hopefully this means Jason's been feeling better lately.