And Nothing Hurt
The title of Spiritualized’s eighth album is the back half of a line from Kurt Vonnegut’s *Slaughterhouse-Five*: “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” In a tweet, Pierce explained that starting with *And* “presupposes that something, or everything, has happened before.” After almost four decades making music—often in response to personal crises including heartbreak, addiction, disease, and near-death experiences—everything *has* happened to Pierce before. *And Nothing Hurt* was born from a different kind of upheaval. In the flush ’90s, labels could let a band like Spiritualized splurge on ample studio time, 120 live musicians for a single track, and entire choirs. No longer afforded those luxuries, Pierce learned to use Pro Tools, painstakingly sampling sounds from classical recordings, and managed, with just a handful of backing musicians, to create an album every bit as gargantuan and emotional as ever. Pierce deftly moves between intimacy and maximalism, combining shoegaze, free jazz, somber ballads, lavish orchestration, and synths in ways that shouldn’t work, but do. “Let’s Dance” begins wistful and dainty, gradually building into a wild, brassy carnival. Likewise, the joyful “On the Sunshine” morphs from warm flutes into a cacophony of squealing horns and ecstatic jazz. *And Nothing Hurts* is a profoundly self-aware album acknowledging age, loss, and mortality. On “The Prize,” Pierce sings, “Gonna be shooting like a star across the sky/Gonna burn brightly for a while/Then you’re gone.”
On what may or may not be the final album from his legendary space-rock project, Jason Pierce finally sounds as though he has a hold on his passions, preoccupations, and demons.
Spiritualized leaves us (maybe, but probably not) with the essential And Nothing Hurt, while Chilly Gonzales’ Solo Piano trilogy ends on a contemplative note, and Chicago MC Joey Purp sounds better than ever on his third mixtape. Plus, we take a look at the latest from Mothers and Ava Luna.
Jason Pierce keeps on keeping on throughout this fragile, improbably beautiful ode to life itself
We're in familiar territory here, but Jason Pierce's wonky genius is as consistent as ever
Spiritualized’s eighth album hails from the same blissed-out space-rock territory and layered arrangements as 1997 masterpiece 'Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space'
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Jason Pierce can't seem to make an album these days without suffering some major setback. For almost 30 years now the man they call Spaceman...
Fresh off a six-year break from 2012's Sweet Heart Sweet Light, Jason Pierce's acclaimed space-rock outfit, Spiritualized makes a lush return with their seventh full-length, And Nothing Hurt.
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Jason Pierce's latest 'And Nothing Hurt' is a kind of condensed greatest hits of the greatest merits of Spiritualized.
Spiritualized end on a high but often a little too laidback note in our review of the twangy yet spacey album 'And Nothing Hurt'
An eighth album from Jason Pierce’s dependably blissed-out and hazy psych rock outfit
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