This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
You know what they say about things that go up. And let’s face it, Spiritualized leader Jason Pierce has been floating around — way, er, high up there, if you follow — ever since his days in trance-rockers Spaceman 3. So it was bound to happen that one day, he’d be the man who fell to Earth.
The journal of that impact is this fourth album from his solo project Spiritualized. The 11-song Let It Come Down is a spellbinding, hour-long musical odyssey of regret, redemption and rebirth — many of these tunes seem preoccupied with the quest for sobriety — set against a magnificent array of musical backdrops, from ’60s garage-rock (The Twelve Steps, On Fire) and grand orchestral-pop (Stop Your Crying, Out of Sight) to jangly folk (The Straight And The Narrow) and spaced-out gospel (Lord Can You Hear Me and the 10-minute epic Won’t Get to Heaven). Indeed, Let It Come Down is perhaps the most spiritual Spiritualized disc yet, with Pierce somewhere between heaven and hell, his soul hanging in the balance. Can he get a witness?
