Spiritualized - Everything Was Beautiful (LP)

Spiritualized albums always arrive like care packages from a distant orbit, sealed with care and humming with static. Everything Was Beautiful landed on 22 April 2022 via Fat Possum in the US and Bella Union in the UK, and it plays as the companion piece to 2018’s And Nothing Hurt. The pairing takes its cue from Kurt Vonnegut’s famous line, split into two records that talk to each other across time. Jason Pierce, forever J Spaceman, keeps chasing that old modern miracle where garage rock, gospel, drone, and orchestral pop stack up until they feel like a single deep breath.

It starts with a familiar star map. “Always Together With You” reworks the 2014 Spiritualized track “Always Forgetting With You (The Bridge Song)” from The Space Project compilation, now rebuilt into a proper liftoff. The arrangement blooms from whispering electronics to a brass-and-choir surge that feels like sunrise over a city. Then “Crazy” sidesteps into a wistful country sway, Pierce leaning into his tender, cracked register while pedal steel sighs around him. He has always loved the push and pull between bliss and bruises, and this one wears the bruise like a ring.

There is a great run in the middle where Spiritualized draw straight lines between their many selves. “Best Thing You Never Had (The D Song)” snaps with ragged guitar and handclaps. “Let It Bleed (For Iggy)” tips the cap in its title, but the track is pure Spaceman, a fanfare of horns and fuzz that rattles the shelves. “The Mainline Song” rides a motorik throb, sirens and choirs bubbling up like shortwave interference. The sequencing is elegant. Seven songs, each one swollen with detail, none of them crowded.

Part of the thrill here is hearing how much ground this record covers without breaking its spell. Pierce recorded across multiple studios and at home, drawing in a small army of players, strings, brass, and voices until the edges blur into warmth. You can hear the fingerprints of that method in the way instruments seem to appear from the corners. Little shaker lines and chimes, a harmony that feels like it drifted in from a church down the street, a saxophone line left like a note on the fridge. The production keeps his obsession with clarity intact, even at full overdrive.

Spiritualized have long loved their pharmaceutical aesthetic, and the album art brings back the medicine-cabinet design that first became iconic in the Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space era. It suits the music. These songs feel prescribed for a specific state of mind. Critics caught the drift. The Guardian, Pitchfork, and Uncut all praised the record’s sweep and focus, hearing it as a tightening of the ideas that have driven Pierce since the mid 90s. Fans heard the same thing on tour, where the arrangements opened up without losing the tenderness that sets this chapter apart from the blitzed freak-outs of the Pure Phase and Lazer Guided Melodies days.

That tenderness peaks on the closer. “I’m Coming Home Again” moves patiently for nine-odd minutes, layering strings, brass, and massed voices until the room feels larger. Pierce has written plenty of endings that feel like light through a stained-glass window. This might be his most generous. It does not ask for faith so much as offer comfort, and by the time the choir crests, the album’s title reads like a quiet hope rather than a declaration.

Everything Was Beautiful is one of those records that makes immediate sense on wax. The low-end bloom, the space between the choir and the tambourine, the way feedback curls at the edges of the room, all of it benefits from a needle and a patient afternoon. If you stumble on Everything Was Beautiful vinyl in your local Melbourne record store, do not leave it behind. For collectors who like to buy Spiritualized records online, the current pressings sound rich and unfussy, the art looks sharp, and it slots neatly next to other Spiritualized albums on vinyl. Folks hunting from abroad will find plenty of copies floating through shops that specialize in vinyl records Australia wide, and the demand for Spiritualized vinyl tends to spike whenever the band hits the road.

Spin it front to back and you get the full arc. Pierce at the desk, feverish and meticulous. A choir that turns a simple refrain into a benediction. Songs that remember the scuzz and the shine, and an album that earns its title the hard way, through craft and care. It is a late-night keeper, the kind of record you pull again once the house is quiet and the city lights have softened to a glow.