Dole queue on smack

[Spiby]

Many years ago, I remember reading a review of Spiritualized at the Royal Albert Hall (18 years ago, then...), where the band were described as '...coming on stage looking like a dole queue on smack', and '...if this were whale music, it's killer whale music'. I seem to remember it was a great review, but I can't find any reference to it anywhere. They're such memorable lines, but did I imagine them??

[Hedspace]

http://spiritualized.band/viewtopic.php ... 396#p69023

[Spiby]

Ah, SWells - that's right.

Thanks Hedspace (don't know why I couldn't find that earlier).

[mc]

Another (slightly later, perhaps 1998) very complimentary live Spz review from Swells described them as "skull-crushing space metal" or something very similar. Utterly loved that one, both then and now

[mc]

My bad: it was a live review of Reef (!), and Swells' phrase was "the skull-exploding space-metal of Spiritualized", coined in relation to Reef's rather anodyne live show, and what one should expect regarding a real ROCK show I'm pleased I had the quote almost right after all these years

http://www.nme.com/reviews/981

[semisynthetic]

Regardless of the exact origin, "Dole Queue on Smack" would make a great Band name, or even a terrific Song Title!

[BzaInSpace]

Steven Wells. I was heartbroken when I found out he died.

That review is an all time classic, beyond Lester Bangs anyway.

Is it worth pasting here again?

Hell yeah!!

[BzaInSpace]

Spiritualized, RAH 1997, live review:

The drugs work. They work like dogs.

The hack has fallen in love, seen the future of rock and touched the face of God.

Again.

Please be prepared for babbling sycophantic hyperbole verging on the hysterical.

Spiritualized dribble onstage looking like a dole queue on smack, then wank and noodle for a bit while similarly satorially inadequate audience sway gently in a stoned manner.

Oh no. Your brain screams for catharsis for crescendo, for violence!

You get it. In the space of ten breathtaking seconds we savagely accelerate from a mild surburban Woodstock to May 2, 1944 - the day the Americans dropped 20,000 tons of high explosive on Berlin Zoo. This - there are no other words for it - is heavy bastard metal.

And that's all that Spiritualized do.

All night.

They whisper, they throb and then they scream. Then they f--k your brains out.

And then they f--k your brains out some more.

It's as if a mosquito had been encased in amber after sucking blood from the huge hairy '70s RAWK! dinosaur just seconds before it was ripped apart by punk rock monkeys.

It's as if scientists had then extracted that dinosaur's DNA and filtered out the crippling shit of pomposity and misogyny and somehow distilled and boosted the remaining atomic thunder to create a new monster - just in time to greet the millenium.

Spiritualized have Genghis Khan-ed the past. Their genius is their realisation that any new rock song about love and drugs in the jaded, pasty-faced, parasitical New Labour '90s has to scale the same peaks as Lou Reed's 'Perfect Day', Jefferson Airplanes's 'White Rabbit', Ike and Tina Turner's 'River Deep, Mountain High', The Beatles' 'Helter Skelter', Righteous Brothers' 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling' and Patti Smith's 'Piss Factory' all at the same time!

The result is an ENORMOUS sound, the like of which hasn't been heard since John Zorn had the brilliant idea of combining envelope-bursting avant-garde jazz with Napalm Death-style thrash metal.

High praise indeed.

Spiritualized make all the obvious competition look stunted and scared.

This has got to be what The Verve think they sound like.

This must be what Paul Weller imagines we hear when he bores our arses off with his tedious jams.

Spiritualized have redifined, reclaimed, relegitimised, reintegrated, distilled, purified and postmodernised hairy-hippy-dippy heavy metal where Zodiac Mindwarp, Guns N'Roses, The Cult (circa 'Electric) and Kula Shaker all failed.

Their only obvious peers, the only other rock reptiles out there who look likely to survive the ongoing dance apocalypse, are the Prodigy (who have similarly succeeded where Jesus Jones, EMF and Pop Will Eat Itself et al merely promised).

Then the arrogant bastards bolt on gospel, soul, trance, Phil Spector's Wall Of Sound and tons of mouldy old prog rock bollocks and then the stupid fucking idiots push the resulting ugly and ungainly mutant out of a window and expect it to fly!

And it does!

It ain't all jam.

Smack is a debilitating and talent-crushing drug taken by boring arseholes and, like depression, or your girlfriend leaving you for a drum roadie, it makes for tedious lyrical subject matter.

Spiritualized are also too ready to hide behind their epileptic-unfriendly light show and would obviously benefit greatly from employing Gold Blade as both stylists and choreographers.

But the largest potential fly in the medication - the ning-nang-nongy,sloppy, drooling, wanky, New-Agey, Jimmy Pagey, smelly, hippy imagery- works in their favour, not only because it is largely crushed smothered and mutated by savagely carnivorous rockist violence and Spector-esque flights of almost orchestral overreach, but, perversely,because Spiritualized have somehow stopped the clock just seconds before the late-'60s/early '70s psychedelic party was turned into a sludgy nightmare by heroin.

Now there's postmodernist irony for you.

If this is 'whale music' then it is killer whale music.

If Spiritualized put you in mind of dolphins then it's that epic bit of shark documentary footage where a Great White is rammed broadside by an evilly-grinning Flipper lookalike and literally disintegrates under the savage impact, spewing scarlet shark guts into the surrounding ocean in sickeningly violent slo-mo.

This is white boys getting black music arsebackwards brilliantly.

This would make Norman Tebbit spew his chips.

This is the perfect antidote to the hideous hordes of shrilly-honking upper-classes who fill this venue on the last night of The Proms.

Spiritualized are the last great rock generation's second great rock band.

They are that important. Babble over and out. Somebody pass me a tissue...

Also found this awesome review he did of the live album...

http://www.nme.com/reviews/spiritualized/285

Quite a big record, then. The people who put the Lou into hallelujah, the only band on the planet with an altitude problem, bring you the orgasm, the womb, incarnation, love, death, purgatory, some seraphic line-dancing and a top game of pool with the ineffable. A hosanna in the works, or what...