The six date American tour will follow a packed summer schedule for the space rock outfit which will see them play at a number of European venues along with a fair few festivals, and will see them return to a couple of venues they visited on their previous visit to North America in September of last year (namely, White Eagle Hall in Jersey City, NJ and Union Transfer in Philadelphia, PA).

The announcement came yesterday via the group’s twitter page and will no doubt excite their East coast American fans who will get to see the band again in such a short space of time.

Spiritualized® Live™ US
Local pre-sales from (10AM local time) 05.10.2023 – (10PM local time) 05.11.2023
General on-sale (12PM local time) 05.12.2023 https://t.co/xqiUt3Pqv4 pic.twitter.com/M5rwtBQOXf

— Spiritualized® (@officialSpzd) May 9, 2023

Spiritualized were formed in 1990 by frontman Jason Pierce (J Spaceman) following the disbanding of his previous group, Spacemen 3, after a series of fall outs with former co-frontman Peter Kember (Sonic Boom). Pierce subsequently brought with him to Spiritualized fellow Spacemen 3 members Will Carruthers, Mark Refoy and Jonny Mattock to form the new space rock outfit.

The band released its debut album, Lazer Guided Melodies, in 1992, incorporating more of a shoegaze element along with the distinctive spacey, psychedelic sound of Spacemen 3, and with their next album, Pure Phase (1995) came a slight delve into britpop, all the while maintaining a keen appetite for space rock. Their third album, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, released in 1997, became their most successful and most well-known release, peaking at number four in the UK Albums Chart and being named NME’s Album of the Year.

Listen to “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” below:

Spiritualized have since become space rock pioneers and have amassed a huge cult following, and have released a total of nine studio albums, the latest of which, Everything Was Beautiful, was released in April 2022 on Fat Possum Records. The group’s current lineup consists of Jason Pierce (vocals, guitar), John Coxon (guitar, keyboard), Doggen Foster (guitar), James Stelfox (bass), Kevin Bales (drums) and Tom Edwards (keyboards).

See below for the US tour dates:

06/11/2023 – White Eagle Hall – New Jersey, NJ
07/11 – Asbury Hall – Buffalo, NY
08/11 – Basilica Hudson – Hudson, NY
09/11 – Mr Smalls Theatre – Millvale, PA
11/11 – Union Transfer – Philadelphia, PA
12/11 – Webster Hall – New York, NY

You can purchase tour tickets from May 12th here.

YAY!

Presale for Weekend 2 starts Friday 1/14 at 10am PT. Weekend 1 is sold out. Register now at https://t.co/qujCsdCWkp pic.twitter.com/cEp5iNJY9M

— Coachella (@coachella) January 13, 2022

As well as the one and only Harry Styles on Friday, Northampton punk-rapper Slowthai has joined the bill after the success of his 2021 output Tyron, Bristol’s beloved post-punk powerhouse IDLES, Space rock maestros Spiritualized will also see the crowds of Coachella shortly after the release of their new album. Other artists performing on both of the festivals Friday’s include; indie darling Phoebe Bridgers, Aussie psych-rock legends King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Lil Baby may show off some of his new collaborative album with Lil Durk The Voice of Our Heroes, the DJ tent will also see quite a lot of variety with early 2000s classics like The Avalanches appearing alongside the up and coming Logic1000.

Saturday’s headliner Billie Eilish is also joined by a host of acts from over the pond; Reading and Leeds Festival headliners Disclosure sit particularly high on the bill, synth-pop party Hot Chip come a little earlier, along with Floating Points (who recently made it into our top 10 UK albums of 2021 with Promises), Mercury Prize Winner Arlo Parks, and Rina Sawayama show off some of Britain’s best female artists at the moment, and black midi brings their own blend of post-punk-jazz-noise to the desert. Flume, Megan Thee Stallion and BROCKHAMPTON fill out the upper section of the lineup, while Freddie Gibbs and Madlib, and Japanese Breakfast turn up for anyone else wanting something different.

The artist formerly known as Kanye West (now simply labelled Ye) is set to headline the festivals final days with 1/3 of indie icons The xx playing in the form of idiosyncratic drummer/DJ Jamie xx, Fatboy Slim keeps up the beach vibes and beabadoobee brings a little indie ambience to an otherwise dance and hip hop heavy day, Duke Dumont brings the British club scene with him too. The bunch will be joined by Hip-hop duo Run the Jewels, Doja Cat, Maggie Rogers, and even Sweden’s own punk output Viagra Boys.

Ticket information can be found here.

Regarding the conception and construction of the sweet country-soul lament set throughout a multitude of national lockdowns, J Spaceman says, “I felt like I’d been in training for this my whole life”. Highlighting that some people suffered through the isolation periods of lockdown, Spaceman however reframed the time alone as a “beautiful solitude” leading to an almost fondness for the period. Walking through an empty “Roman London” where “even the sirens had stopped singing” and where the world was “full of birdsong and strangeness and no contrails.” These times were used by Spaceman to listen to the new work, and assess the new mixes for the upcoming album.

“Crazy” on the surface seems to be an album that doesn’t want to do much in half measures. With Spaceman playing 16 instruments across 11 different studios (and his own home) and more than 30 outside performers – including his own daughter Poppy, and long-term collaborator John Coxon – enlisted to help with the instrumentals, we can expect string sections, brass sections, choirs, bells, chimes, and maybe even some performances from other members of the band. “There was so much information on it that the slightest move would unbalance it, but going around in circles is important to me. Not like you’re spiralling out of control but you’re going around and around and on each revolution you hold onto the good each time. Sure, you get mistakes as well, but you hold on to some of those too and that’s how you kind of… achieve. Well, you get there.”

You can pre-order the album here, the artwork on the vinyl edition, designed by Mark Farrow, contains 8 pillboxes you can pop out of the sleeve revealing a gold foil underneath with Braille-embossed inserts you can build and use as you please. Spiritualized are also heading on a UK tour beginning on April 28^th at The Forum in Bath and ending at Camden’s iconic Roundhouse. See the full dates below, and find more details here.

28/4/2022 – The Forum Bath
29/4 – Corn Exchange – Cambridge
30/4 – Dome – Brighton
2/5 – Symphony Hall – Birmingham
4/5 – Sage – Gateshead
5/5 – SWG3 Galvanizers – Glasgow
7/5 – Olympia Theatre – Dublin
8/5 – Bridgewater Hall – Manchester
9/5 – Royal Concert Hall – Nottingham
10/5 – Roundhouse – London

*** Spaceman Reissue Program ***

Lazer Guided Melodies – the classic debut album reissued with new artwork on double 180-gram white vinyl

And new Lazer Guided Melodies merchandise based on the original, vintage designs

Available to pre-order now via https://t.co/bux8oadRqd pic.twitter.com/JnpPdLXOoo

— Spiritualized® (@officialSpzd) February 24, 2021

Emerging from the creative ashes of Jason Pierce’s former group, cult psychedelic rockers Spaceman 3, Spiritualized swiftly marked their arrival on the burgeoning shoegaze scene with a statement debut LP. Lazer Guided Melodies was described at the time as “21st Century gospel” by legendary British music journal Melody Maker, while Sputnik Music would later call it a “mesmerizing journey into another dimension“, adding that “the best way to understand this album is to suspend reason and to momentarily leave the left side of your brain at the door.”

The Rugby outfit would go on to enjoy their greatest commercial and critical success with their third studio record Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space five years later. The LP – with a title that referenced a quote from Norwegian philosopher Jostein Gaarder – secured a number #4 berth in the Official UK Albums Chart, and pipped critics’ darlings Radiohead and The Verve to win NME’s Album of the Year award for 1997.

In a press release accompanying the Spacemen Reissue Program announcement this week, Pierce said “The last Spacemen 3 record was under-realized to me. When I listen back to that stuff it sounds like somebody finding their way. There was a lot of ideas but no way to put them into a space that would make them all work. So, there was a huge freedom forging over the last Spacemen 3 record and when Spiritualized started it was like, ‘OK it’s all yours. Go’…”

He added: “We recorded the tracks in the studio near my flat which was a place where they predominantly recorded advertising jingles and it’s where we made all the Spacemen 3 records, but then the recordings were taken to Battery Studios in London, to explore a more professional way of making music… Once I approached that way of doing things I opened up a whole world and I was astounded that somebody could take those tracks and turn it into the record it became.”

The Warwickshire group have undergone numerous personnel changes over the year – there are a combined 20 current and former members of Spiritualized – but the current line-up (Pierce, John Coxon, Doggen Foster, Thomas Wayne, Kevin Bales, Tom Edwards) have been firmly in post for over a decade. Over the last nine years, the dream pop collective have released two studio albums: 2012’s Sweet Heart Sweet Light and 2018’s And Nothing Hurt.

And Nothing Hurt – out now

His eighth Spiritualized album, Pierce recorded, mixed and produced the entire piece himself in his East London home, with nothing but his instruments, microphones and ProTools – a programme with which he was previously unacquainted. In a press release for the album, Pierce says that “making this record on [his] own sent [him] more mad than anything [he’s] done before.”

“We’d been playing these big shows and I really wanted to capture that sound we were making, but without having the funds to do so, I had to find a way to work within the constraints of what money I had. So I bought a laptop and made it all in a little room in my house.”

Explaining the ideas behind the record, Spaceman says that “the biggest thing for [him] was to try to make it sound like a studio session.”  Without his usual assistance, “[he] just sat there for weeks… for months… moving every level up bit by bit just to try to get the sounds right.”

For Pierce, now aged 52, the inevitable aging process was a key theme of the album. “I didn’t want to be fighting against my age; it’s very much about acceptance. And not with any dissatisfaction either – I’m not raging against the inevitable. I spent a lot of time thinking about the way that the songs should hold together, trying to make the narratives make sense rather than just throwing together a couple of lines that rhymed.”

See the tracklist below:

1. A Perfect Miracle
2. I’m Your Man
3. Here It Comes (The Road) Let’s Go
4. Let’s Dance
5. On The Sunshine
6. Damaged
7. The Morning After
8. The Prize
9. Sail On Through

Prior to its full release, the album was teased by the singles ‘I’m Your Man’ and ‘Here It Comes (The Road) Let’s Go’. See the songs below:

Pierce, known to his fans as J-Spaceman, described the new track as “a list of instructions that, if followed, allows the listener to find my house. The route is real but it’s on the west coast of America so the house being mine is a fiction.” Driven by only a few basic chords and a country-tinged arrangement, the song plays on an interesting contrast between the classic Americanism of its road-trip lyrics and the vulnerable, weak-sounding Britishness of its delivery. “I love the line about the cop waiting up all night to add to his total busts for the day”, he said. “I wanted it to all end in happiness but it leaves with just a small trace of sadness.”

Having already released ‘A Perfect Miracle‘ and ‘I’m Your Man‘, the new track is Spaceman’s third single from the forthcoming album. Made almost entirely on his own, the record sent “[him] more mad than anything [he’s] done before.”

“We’d been playing these big shows and I really wanted to capture that sound we were making but, without the funds to do, I had to find a way to work within the constraints of what money I had. So I bought a laptop and made it all in a little room in my house.”

Spiritualized’s first album, Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, has been hailed as one of the best albums of the 1990s. The group emerged from the breakup of Pierce’s previous band, Spacemen 3. Backed by his songwriting- and drugs-driven-spiritual-partnership with Pete Kember (better known as Sonic Boom), the Rugby-based group revolutionised neo-psychedelia in the 1980s and 1990s with their unique minimalist sound.  Incorporating influences from proto-punk, electronic music, classic ’60s psychedelia and even Bo Diddley and Buddy Holly, the group achieved critical acclaim with their albums The Perfect Prescription and Playing With Fire.

Spiritualized are set to play at the Eventim Apollo in London on 21st September. Buy your tickets here.

And Nothing Hurt – out September 7th