Scott Kara's Forward Thinking: A Spiritualized nostalgia trip

Spiritualized live at the Sydney Opera House. Photo / Prudence Upton

Ladies and gentlemen, I am floating in space and I've only had a few wines.

Maybe it's the swinging gospel choir that has transported me here? Or perhaps it's the wailing wall of brass and fit-inducing strobes that has taken me higher than the sun?

Although, more than likely, it's the collective power of gospel space rockers Spiritualized who are taking me on one almighty music trip.

The British band, led by Jason Pierce (aka Jason Spaceman) who formed the group in 1990 following the demise of Spaceman 3, are one of the headliners of Sydney's Vivid Festival.

They're here to play their classic 1997 album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, and for the shows at Sydney Opera House they have been beefed up with a choir, strings, and a brass section who conjure up a crazed sonic squall.

Pierce cuts a frail figure these days after a near fatal bout of pneumonia in 2005. And all those drugs the 45-year-old has supposedly taken over the years - not that he's ever really openly admitted it - must have done a job on him too.

As a band leader though, he's a deft director, steering the show from his comfy chair and from behind his dark bulbous shades. He often stops playing his guitar, letting the band do the work, before chiming back in with unnerving fury.

It's the sort of album that makes for a brilliantly trippy live experience, as it moves from the rowdy chorale grandeur of Come Together, through to the graunching space punk of Electricity, and then the moving simplicity of Cool Waves. I tell ya, I almost got a little teary.

But for an intensely sad album about heartbreak and drug addiction ("There's a hole in my arm where the money goes," intones Pierce on Cop Shoot Cop), it sure is an uplifting piece of rock 'n' roll.

Then again, it always was. For me, back in the 90s when I was a carefree cycle courier bum, Spiritualized was a badly needed alternative to the jumped-up Brit pop brigade.

They were like something between the shoegaze bands and the dissonant din of My Bloody Valentine. While Ladies and Gentlemen got all the praise, the band's 1992 debut Lazer Guided Melodies - a transcendental encounter in itself - is also an unheralded classic.

But by the time they released Ladies and Gentlemen the gospel and blues influences had taken hold, and it made for a truly spiritual listening experience, man.

The thing I'd forgotten about it, until seeing it live like this, was the amount of wailing harmonica on the album. And best of all, the beauty of the lyrics and the passion and fragility with which this emaciated man delivers them.

From the gentle pleading of the title track (which he also sings to the tune of, and with the lyrics from, Elvis' Can't Help Falling in Love) through to the stinging savagery of lines like "The little f***** fed the ache" on Come Together.

And yes, the album is riddled with drug references, from the junkie lines of Cop Shoot Cop to the flippant "Sun so bright that I'm nearly blind, cool cos I'm wired and I'm out of my mind", on I Think I'm in Love.

Even the design of the original album was like pharmaceutical drug packaging. "For aural administration only. Each tablet contains 70min," it said in the liner notes. "What is Spiritualized used for?" it continued inside. "Spiritualized is used to treat the heart and soul."

The music is the only stimulant needed tonight because it's about the trip the album takes you on when these songs are performed as they are meant to be - with a choir, an orchestra, and a cracking rock band.

Cop Shoot Cop is the most telling moment. It's a seductive, lilting epic that goes on for more than 20 minutes. Pierce lures you in and then halfway through the intensity of the song throttles and asphyxiates you.

This might sound a little strange, and I'm not getting kinky or anything, but it's a strangely thrilling feeling, making this one hell of a nostalgia trip.

-TimeOut