"The guitarist" in question was Mike Mooney. Mooney was basically responsible for turning the rest of the band against Jason. Mike had been with Julian Cope for a while in the '80s. (Courtney Love claims she lost her virginity to him!) He had been in various bands from the late '80s on and joined Spiritualized after Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, apparently because John Coxon was not yet willing to leave Spring Heel Jack and tour with Spiritualized full time. Anyway, Mooney played at the Royal Albert Hall gig and he also appeared on the two songs recorded at Abbey Road in 1997, "Come Together" and "Broken Heart" for the Abbey Road EP (i.e. Come Together single). What happened was that after Abbey Road, Mooney wanted to be cut in on the songwriting and band revenues, rather than just being a salaried employee. He convinced Sean Cook and Damon Reece that Jason was screwing them. And that was pretty well the end of that. Jason (probably correctly) reasoned that Cooke, Reece, and Mooney were all replaceable, and Thighpaulsandra had already stepped in for Kate. Mooney, Cook, and Reece were all fine players but they were dumb to think that they had any kind of leverage over Jason, who (as the songwriter, producer, and singer) was effectively their meal ticket. And after all, each of them had already replaced another man (Mark Refoy, Willie Carruthers, and Jonny Mattock, respectively) in Spiritualized! Mooney wasn't even Jason's first choice to take over on lead guitar. Honestly, Jason himself is at least as good a guitar soloist as Mooney (or Refoy). And it pretty much speaks for itself that we're still talking about Spiritualized today but no-one remembers Lupine Howl.
But Spiritualized haven’t made a decent LP since they all left…. So maybe they were right and Jason was wrong? Who knows?
I'd disagree with you on that, but each to their own. Although nothing has been as good as Pure Phase for me...
I think there was definitely a bit of a drop off in quality after Ladies & Gents. Not sure it could be put down to the lineup changes. Most bands would kill for a run like Jason’s first three albums.
I got into Spiritualized in 1998. I know that a lot of guys who got into the band before that share your opinion. I don't. IMHO the idea that Jason lost his way after LAGWAFIS consolidated based on a few things: 1) slight overvaluing of Lazer Guided Melodies and LAGWAFIS; 2) Let It Come Down not being to all tastes and Amazing Grace being slightly disappointing; 3) 5 years of life intervening between Amazing Grace and A&E. Step 3 in itself was enough for a lot of peoples' tastes to ossify as original '90s fans hit their 30s and 40s. For what it's worth, I consider And Nothing Hurt as great as anything Jason has ever done. I'm also partial to A&E. I will concede that Sweet Heart and Amazing Grace are spotty, but I still enjoy them. And my point stands -- And Nothing Hurt was a sales success and a lot of people loved it. Even Let It Come Down earns a lot of affection nowadays.
We all have different tastes. But maybe a band approach may have led to more great albums, rather than a scattering of great individual songs. Of course Spiritualized aren’t terrible post Ladies. But hard to defend that they got better, or even stayed at the same level. Of course people are free to argue. See the Radiohead thread. Personally I think their best LPs are all Hail to the Thief onwards - so what do I know….
I got into Spiritualized in 2010, having seen the Plain reissue of Ladies and Gentlemen in the rack at my local record shop, looking it up and finding Pitchfork's perfect 10 score. The only record I don't love is Amazing Grace, but it has its moments and works better, imo, in the 3xEP sequence.
I get what you're saying, but the thing is, Jason had already long since given up on a "band approach" by the time he started work on Ladies & Gentlemen. If you really want to fasten on a turning point when Spiritualized stopped being a "band" and started being a Jason solo act, that point is when Mark Refoy quit, so most of the way through the Pure Phase sessions. Mark and Jason wrote together, did the arranging together, etc. Kate was also involved in the arranging process. When Kate drifted away and Mark quit to start Slipstream, it left Jason to his own devices. At first he leaned hard on his new friendship with John Coxon, who was not even in the band formally but whose tastes and contributions completely overruled everything any of the other members (except Jason) put in. John Coxon completely changed the sound of the band. Maybe your quarrel is with him. Sean Cook is a talented guy (I actually like both Lupine Howl albums a lot) but besides his skill as a harmonica player, it's hard to perceive his influence on the band's sound. He's nowhere near as distinctive a presence on bass as Will Carruthers had been. And Reece and Mooney were barely in the band at all. (Reece barely even became the main drummer in Lupine Howl; they used Jonny Mattock just as much.) Mooney blew up a good gig for himself and the other guys, but the impact on Spiritualized as an institution was quite minimal.
I agree that this was pretty stupid and ****ty of Mooney and the rest to do this. They screwed themselves out of a good thing from the sounds of it. Likely they would have benefitted financially if they have survived into the LICD era and beyond. I also reject the notion that Spiritualized went downhill after L&G. Far too many good songs on those following albums for them to be written off. And yeah, ANH was probably my favourite since LICD. I'm excited to hear what the new album has to offer.
Just another data point re the "band approach": the core group of Jason, John Coxon, Doggen Foster, Tom Edwards, and Kevin Bales has been together more than 20 years now.
thing is ... they were much more interesting live before they imploded in 1998 Kevin Bales is obviously a talented drummer, he is just extremely dull to watch and i sometimes feel that their live performances lack a little of the fire and creativity they had in the live environment previously.
i found a 12 volume, i think, real complete spz works on a bootleg site made by someone called 'gary'. have you heard it?
the 4th tour tickets were very expensive and the album had a 'hit' single and sold well. i assume he sold his stuff because he no longer wanted it to make room for new stuff. didn't will carthers have to sell stuff for medical bills or something? he had two outtakes spz cds that jason then released for free (friendly fire and blue on blue) screwing him. jason made not have made much in royalties but he made much more than the rest of the band. coldplay credit all songs 4 ways so everyone gets a fair cut. if you're not the song writer, you see much less cash!
I'm not sure if Kev Bales is in the band anymore. He was very sick for a while and isn't on And Nothing Hurt. His replacement (Jonny 8-Track) is a session guy who is definitely no longer in the band. When I saw them in 2019 the drummer was overwhelmingly loud and powerful. Not sure who it even was. A bald guy.
I think the departure of Kate Radley after LAGWAFIS affected the sound of the band more than most people think.
that's a long list of people! she moved to liverpool to try to be with ian mcculloch (she wanted him to be her 'first') but he turned her down then there are a few claims. sorry, i digress...
did this brilliant chart include the kid millions us band tour? was the basis eg coxon, still the same?
Jason certainly has been saying this over and over again in retrospective interviews, and I think he's absolutely right. There was a lot of sexism in the Spiritualized fan community back in the day and I think most guys were disinclined to believe how fundamental a role she played in their sound and how much she actually contributed to the arranging. To his credit, Jason is trying to correct the record on that. As I mentioned, it was the loss of Refoy and Kate that changed the sound of Spiritualized, not Cook, Mooney, or Reece. Those 3 guys were all replacements anyway! Spiritualized fans in the '90s and early 2000s were so attached to the idea of Kate as a talentless girlfriend in a miniskirt that they tied themselves in knots trying to explain the credits on the sleeves and to justify how the firing of Mooney and Reece (two guys who had barely been in the band at all) was some kind of turning point. It's still happening tbh. Spiritualized fandom can be such a sausage fest. Mind you, the same kind of thing happened with other bands at around the same time. For example, in Pulp the idea of the volatile genius of Russell Senior completely overshadowed the fact that Candida Doyle apparently wrote something like half the music on their Island albums (maybe more). But because the Pulp fandom is more woman-dominated her contributions are still more valued than Kate's in Spiritualized. I respect Thighpaulsandra a great deal as a musician, but I'm not a big fan of his contributions to Spiritualized. He has this kind of stiff, bright, almost dinky piano approach (see the intro to "On Fire") that I don't care for. I wasn't sorry to see him move on after A&E.
My friend on Facebook is complaining about how many times he's bought Ladies & Gentlemen over again, in slightly different editions, almost every time it's been reissued, and it reminded me of this place.
Finally had a chance to listen to my L&G vinyl, I decided to try the black one, side one. There was a little crackling at the intro and between tracks after a few passes with my carbon fiber brush, but nothing noticeable when listening to the tracks, even in the quiet parts. It sounded very nice and pleasing overall, so I thought I would compare a track to my VMP copy. I didn't have time to compare the whole side song by song, but I listened to I Think I'm In Love on the new version, then the VMP version right afterwards. They were very close, but I would give the blue VMP a slight edge over the Fat Possum black vinyl pressing in my opinion. The lead and backing vocals seemed just a tad more defined, the percussion had a little more crisp of a thump. Overall I felt there was slightly more clarity or space in the VMP pressing, compared to the Fat Possum pressing. This is only a one track comparison and my opinion which isn't worth much! YMMV.
Whoops my bad . I thought Kevin was the bald guy. The bald guy has been playing with them on and off for AGES.
