After already sharing ‘Always Together with You’, the opening track for their new album Everything Was Beautiful (set for release February 25th), today space rock pioneers Spiritualized have shared another single ‘Crazy’ and its accompanying music video. Directed by the band’s own J Spaceman, the video is partly inspired by Andy Warhol’s Kiss can be seen below.
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 28th 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
