J.Spaceman Acoustic Mainlines

Last night I went to see J.Spaceman on his Acoustic Mainlines tour, at Brighton’s newly refurbished Komedia. The tour is described thus:

The dates will showcase some of the songs from the forthcoming Spiritualized album as well as tracks from the Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized catalogues and songs from other artists. He will be accompanied on all dates by a string quartet, gospel singers and [Spiritualized guitarist] Doggen on Fender Rhodes.

And it was fabulous. I’ve seen Spiritualized twice, in all their noisy feedback glory, but stripped down to its essentials, Jason Pierce’s music absolutely stands up to scrutiny: his are beautiful, touching songs of love, loss and damage. And he has a fantastic voice to go with them – not powerful or sophisticated, but utterly soulful. As a longtime Spacemen 3 fan, it was wonderful to hear Walking with Jesus (which got one of the biggest cheers from an enthralled, responive crowd), but the new stuff sounds great too (especially Old Flame) and oldies like Cool Waves and Stop Your Crying were simply gorgeous.

The group played for an hour and half, getting through an impressive set list. They were seated the whole time, which meant even a six-footer like me couldn’t really see much; still the sound was good and the music fantastic. A great night.