Even if I hadn't spent a solid chunk of the last 12 hours editing its audio, the sounds of last night's Spiritualized set at the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston would still be echoing inside my head. Easily the most beautiful show I've seen this year, maybe in several years, and I'm feeling forced to hit up a thesaurus to try and describe it. Instead, I'll let others do it for me...
Rick and Jerad shared their thoughts on last night's show.
Frank at Chromewaves wrote up Saturday's Toronto stop.
So how did Jason 'Spaceman' Pierce celebrate his 42nd birthday in Boston? By giving us a present in the form of the final U.S. stop on a tour he has dubbed "Acoustic Mainlines": J. on acoustic guitar, Doggen on electric piano and harmonica, a four piece string section, and a quartet of fantastic backup singers. On paper such a setup might appear pretentious, but in practice it was near-perfection. This gospel gift becomes even more remarkable once you know this bit of info, shared by Case on the Spiritualized message board:
"For those going to the US shows, you'll be surprised to learn that they threw the whole thing together after only three days of being in the US - that includes hiring the gospel singers and string players because they couldn't afford to fly them over from the UK. In addition, they had to hire a different set of string players for the east coast dates because they didn't have the resources to fly the west coast performers over."
I'll not weigh this post down with more words, as all that really matters are the files that follow...
And with that, I'm officially taking a long Thanksgiving break from the 'ol blog, and will return on Monday (what, was three shows shared in three days not enough for ya?). Best wishes to everyone out there, regardless of what your upcoming weekend entails. I've certainly got many, many things to be thankful for, this year especially. Hope you can say the same.
the fine print... If anyone has an issue with these Mp3s being made available, just let me know (my contact info in the 'nac faq). I'm just a fan sharing songs. Live sets are recorded with a Sony ECM-719 mic and a Sony MZ-RH10 minidisc, converted to .wav and then edited to 192kbps Mp3s. Files are made available for a limited time, and are not reposted once removed.