Spiritualized:Shine A Light.

"When I'm tired and all alone, Lord, shine a light on me - and when I'm lonesome as can be, Lord, shine a light on me" - Shine A Light

I've never been one to worry about how 'tight' a band are when they play live (hell, I like Pavement and The Fall) but when the euphoric, screeching, uplifting coda of She Kissed Me (It Felt Like A Hit) cut out and dropped straight into Shine A Light at Spiritualized's Roundhouse gig last night it was a thing of rare and sublime beauty.

A thing that sent a chill up my back and, as Shine A Light - now sounding bigger than it ever has done in the three full decades since it first appeared on Spiritualized's second album Lazer Guided Melodies - played on, it was so ecstatically sad and life affirming I felt like I wanted to cry. As I said to my mate Darren at the time, they'd clearly "rehearsed the fuck" out of this.

It wasn't as if they'd got off to a slow start. Opener Hey Jane grew from a glam rock stomper, though a glam rock stomper shot through with the smacked out cool of The Velvet Underground, into a gospel tinged, guitar drenched, jubilation that most bands would probably have saved for the last song of their set rather than kicked off with and I'm Your Man was a gorgeous hypnagogic meditation on faith and honesty with a chorus you could hardly help lolling your head forwards wistfully to.

 

A Perfect Miracle had the innocence of a nursery rhyme and lyrics to (almost) match. Jason Pierce is never shy to use a "darling" or a "baby" and in this one he's even blowing kisses and teaching the birds the words to every love song he knows, Best Thing You Never Had split the difference between krautrock and heartland rock (imagine The War On Drugs - if they weren't shit), and Here It Comes (The Road) Let's Go, according to Darren, sounds like Budgie Jacket by Felt.

Which, of course, means it's one of his favourite Spiritualized songs. A highlight for me was The Morning After. Probably, at first listen, one of Spiritualized's most straightahead rock songs. The lyrics could almost come from the pen of Chuck Berry but when performed by Spiritualized, these days Pierce's band consists of John Coxon and Doggen Foster on guitars, Thomas Wayne on bass, Kevin Bales on drums, and Tom Edwards on keyboards, opens up and starts exploring territories of space rock and free jazz within the confines of the classic rock world.

Which is, of course, Spiritualized's natural home. For that reason, the august and architecturally pleasing Roundhouse was a perfect fit for the band and even the light show seemed to add to the performance rather than take away from it (even as I type that I'm reminded of Them's The Vagaries by Half Man Half Biscuit - "don't say the light show's excellent, it makes you smell of the laboratory").

Soul on Fire causes a mass singalong ("baby, set my soul on fire. I've got two little arms to hold on tight and I want to take you higher"), mass swaying, and mass emotion. It has the sort of anthemic feel that would sit well at a close friend's funeral or perhaps one of those songs they play over the closing montage after England get knocked out of a major football tournament.

Maybe when they finally play the World Cup in outer space! The audacity of calling one of your songs Come Together is quite a thing but for most people here tonight Spiritualized's one is THE Come Together and, of course, it sounds utterly epic. Guitars zoom out into the furthest dimensions of sound only to be effortlessly and magically reeled back into the service of the song by the magisterial powers and proficiency of Pierce.

There's no I Think I'm In Love, no Run, no Broken Heart, and no Medication, but, after a fairly long wait, the band come on for an encore of So Long You Pretty Things ("help me lord, help me Jesus 'cause I'm lonely and tired"). A song that encapsulates all that is great about Spiritualized. The song speaks of pain and loneliness but it also speaks of how these can be overcome by the power of something greater.

There's a redemptive quality in everything Spiritualized do. It's almost as if the sheer power of (their) music can cleanse your soul. These songs are paeans, they are supplications, they are celebrations of life in all its pain and glory, and, sometimes, they're just great rock songs about girls and drugs and there's nothing wrong with that. Before the gig I'd been feeling a bit down about things - and Spiritualized, once again, not only reminded me of the healing power of music but ably demonstrated it.

Of course, Spiritualized have been being Spiritualized for a long time now so they should be very good at it. But a lot of bands, after thirty years, give the impression of going through the motions. Spiritualized, live more than on record, never do that. Though Jason Pierce barely moves from his office chair for the entire gig he constructs and conducts the whole thing as if some psychedelic Wizard of Oz. It's not that we're not in Kansas anymore. It's more that we never realised how beautiful Kansas really was.

Thanks to Adam, Pete, Pam, and Kathy for joining me at this gig (and, in some cases, providing the photos for this review), extra thanks to Darren who did the same but also got the tickets and the beers in, and even more thanks to Spiritualized to sending me back out into the Camden night feeling like I'd been held in a warm embrace for the best part of two hours. Shine a light, indeed.