You know those shots in films and on TV, the ones where the camera pulls away sharply to reveal a vast functional world swamping the concentrated area on which you’ve been focused feverishly for the last 90 minutes, as a reminder – should you require one – that any tale told is part of a richer, wider tapestry. Hitching in on that metaphor, this might be a bit mid-budget, the camera won’t stretch much beyond the rooftops, but you get the idea, and you can see down onto another terrace or two. There is always a bigger picture with Spiritualized, that’s accepted anyway as being Jason Pirece’s way out of his own extreme close-up. There’s always more, things always have to stop too early, be cut too short, not allowed to breath. So this, like Volume 1 released last year, is the rest, the EP tracks, the b-sides, the session tracks, the directors cut, brought together to prove that the clean cut of the album shot isn’t where the picture stops.
Indulgence after all isn’t served too well by the constraints of an album, especially when the sweet voiced angel on Pierce’s shoulder sings a good argument for entertaining convention in those instances to really reach the glorious heights he deserves. But then this isn’t Volume 1 either. This being the second half of his life under the Spiritualized semi-band moniker he has drawn his head down from the cosmos and concentrates more on Being Phil Spector, extending songs’ reach with shy-grazing orchestration. The clouds are high enough for much of this trip. This stretches as far back as a lush version of ‘Spread Your Wings’ from ‘Pure Phase’ but then moves largely on to ‘Ladies & Gentlemen…’ and ‘Let It Come Down’ era interpretations, the latter of course being when the orchestra had the spotlight firmly in their eyes.
The true rarities, like the ‘Rock and Roll’ and ‘Going Down Slow’ (both originally destined for ‘Let It Come Down’), and a cover version of Mark Snow’s ‘X-Files Theme’, are all obviously welcome, for the sake of completion if nothing else. The goosebump-inducing live session reworkings of ‘On Fire’ and ‘Come Together’ even more so. The ‘Anything More’ and ‘I Didn’t Mean To Hurt You’ instrumentals are an amazing testament to the attention to detail of his musical visions and are brilliantly listenable. But the inclusion of album versions of ‘Electricity’, ‘Come Together’ (alright, strictly speaking from the Abbey Road EP, but spot the difference if you can), ‘Out Of Sight’ et al seem a little like padding where none would have been better. And if it’s let down a little further, the album as a whole stands for a period where ambition took over from impulse. It might have even been wasted effort the camera trying to go any higher.