Track Listing

1. Harmony 1 (mellotron)
2. Sweet Talk
3. Death Take Your Fiddle
4. I Gotta Fire
5. Soul On Fire
6. Harmony 2 (piano)
7. Sitting On Fire
8. Yeah Yeah
9. You Lie You Cheat
10. Harmony 3 (voice)
11. Baby I'm Just A Fool
12. Don't Hold Me Close
13. Harmony 4 (the old man ...)
14. The Waves Crash In
15. Harmony 5 (accordian)
16. Borrowed Your Gun
17. Harmony 6 (glockenspiel)
18. Good Night Goodnight

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13564 in Music
• Released on: 2008-05-26
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 51 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The title Songs to Sing in A&E isn't simply a reference to Jason Pierce's chords of choice on this, the sixth album from Spiritualized. Rather, it's a blackly comic reference to the events that preceded this album's creation--specifically, a bout of pneumonia that saw Pierce fighting for his life from a hospital bed. Spiritualized, however, have always specialised in transforming personal travails into great art, and there's something morbidly compelling about a song like "Death Takes Your Fiddle", a chilly blues song accompanied by the wheeze of an artificial respirator. There may be some unfortunate repercussions from Pierce's illness: his voice sounds somewhat frail in comparison to the brave soul we found on 1997's Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, and this rather seems to expose occasional shortcomings in his lyrics (to follow a song called "I Gotta Fire" with "Soul on Fire" and then "Sitting on Fire" suggests wells of inspiration may be running low). One thing's for sure, though, Pierce is a fine arranger. Lush strings, choirs and flourishes of percussion flesh out simple acoustic songs into impressive symphonies. Meanwhile, "Yeah Yeah" proves Pierce still has a way with an itchy, strung-out blues stomp. --Louis Pattison

CD Description
'Songs In A&E' is the sixth studio album from Jason Pierce's Spiritualized. With a mixture of instrumental and vocal tracks, including a duet with Harmony Korine's wife Rachel on 'Don't Hold Me Close', the music has plenty of dark overtones and leans heavily towards themes of mortality. However, typical of Spiritualized, it still manages to be an uplifting listen. A collection of post-rock melodies that will please long time fans, as well as people new to Pierce's work. Includes the single 'Soul On Fire'.

Customer Reviews

Instant Classic
Patchy? Who said 'patchy'? Hardly. I've only given this album one listen yet it's beauty is instant. It's a wonderful album. No white noise freak outs like on Ladies & Gentlemen, just pure harmony, soft instrumentation on most tracks....some more up tempo but not abrasively so. It has the feel of his acoustic mainlines shows from last year which were out of this world where joy can be found in the most sad heart ripped open lyrics and songs.

On the subject of harmony, whilst the album is 18 tracks long 6 of these are interludes called Harmony 1 thru to 6. Strange sounding instrumentals that I can only assume were the sounds Jason was talking of when he said the hospital machines were musical. Only a guess. I really like them.

At 51 mins its hardly over long so I really doubt whether anyone would say it is.

Anyways, it's a stunner. Can't wait to get an official copy of it.

Very Good
When I clocked that this album features no less than eighteen tracks, I sighed in anticipation of the tedious criticisms that this would inevitably reap: "Were this album a more succinct ten tracks or so it would have been a classic, but it appears unfocused and several tracks feel like unnecessary filler". Yeah yeah. I've not seen any reviews for this yet, but I'll wager that at least one reviewer will offer the above sentiments in their assessment. It's a tedious inevitability.

But...listening to this, I can sort of see where these (hypothetical) reviewers are coming from. Sort of. Almost. Whilst the album does not feel unbalanced or overlong (though containing 18 tracks it's only 51 minutes in total), some tracks are undoubtedly weaker. That's not to dismiss them as filler, however. These...inferior tracks can still create an impression. "Death Take Your Fiddle", for instance, is the most overtly disturbing song ever penned by Mr. Pierce, sampling, as it does, a respirator. It might just be me that finds the sounds of medicine so distressing, but I find that particular song to be a most uncomfortable listen.

The other "lesser tracks", "I Gotta Fire", and "Yeah Yeah" are simply too short. They're immediate and exciting like the best bits of Amazing Grace, but they fail to build upon their ideas and, as such, are wholly unfulfilling. They're not BAD songs, they're just not good enough...

Well, all of these "lesser tracks" appear during the first half of the album, which itself isn't short of merits. The opening duo of "Harmony 1" and "Sweet Talk" is gorgeous: Atmospheric, heartbreaking, huge...think "Broken Heart" or "Stop Your Crying". The single, too, "Soul on Fire", has a timeless quality about it. It's a lush gospel epic which could very well have been penned by Van Morrison, Mike Scott or even Dylan. "You Lie, You Cheat" is even better...it starts off with a catchy yet inoffensively strummed acoustic guitar, before the whole thing is suddenly rudely engulfed by the sort of squalling feedback which harks back to the loudest moments of "Ladies and Gentlemen...". It really could not have been written by any other band.

So, the first half of the album is indeed a bit...patchy. However, from "Harmony 3" onwards we have what will most probably turn out to be the most beautiful twenty five minutes of music released in all of 2008. "Baby, I'm Just a Fool" is the centre piece of this album, musically and literally. It exudes a woozy sense of regret throughout its extended running time, with a simple two-chord guitar rhythm perfectly complimented by the playful chimes of what sounds like a xylophone. As Spiritualized songs are wont to do, it kicks into a higher gear towards the end, allowing for more unusual instruments to experiment with their own melodies without losing the overall drive of the song. Absolutely stunning.

The six "Harmonies" scattered throughout the album serve variantly as interludes and bridges and ensure that rather than a collection of songs, this really is a cohesive, flowing ALBUM. Pierce may be dealing with some uncomfortable subjects, but the sounds he creates are, as ever, strikingly beautiful. After the comparatively stripped down Amazing Grace, this seems like a return to the symphonic experimentation of Let It All Come Down. Be that as it may, whilst Let It All Come Down seemed to strive for excess, here orchestrations and instrumentations are deployed in far subtler manners. It's hardly minimalist, but instruments are given space to breathe and, more than ever before, the spaces between sounds seem just as important as the actual sounds. This approach is perhaps best sampled on "The Waves Crash In", in which the ebbing and flowing vocals and music really do serve to create the impression of, well, crashing waves.

The closing "Goodnight, Goodnight" initially sounds like the sort of saccharine optimistic closer as deployed by The Grateful Dead on Live Dead...and it is lovely, until Pierce starts gently chanting "funeral home, funeral home" as the album fades out...the effect is unnerving, and suddenly it becomes clear that all that preceded, even if it may at times have sounded beautiful, was only so on the surface for, inherent in the lyrics rather than the delivery, is an undertone of misery, despair and menace as was foreshadowed so horribly in the use of hospital samples in "Death Take Your Fiddle". Such a realisation only serves to induce a desire to listen again as soon as the album has finished...which is quite a powerful reaction.

So...to conclude, whilst this album is definitely flawed, any reviewer who says anything along the lines of "could have been shorter" is just wrong. Yes, some tracks stand out quite obviously, but the shorter tracks succeed in transforming this album into a cohesive, conceptual whole. And what a concept! Such a collection of hazy, engaging, intense and fractured songs could only have been written by somebody who came so close to death.

Verily, this album could not have been written by anybody else. It's acid blues or chemical gospel performed by a truly singular talent. It may lack immediacy but it has a depth unrivaled by many other albums and it will be listened to and talked about for years to come. This is not merely another chapter in the narcotic adventures of Jason Pierce. In its own right, it is an excellent album, very powerful, and bears all the hallmarks of a classic.

And the "lesser tracks"? Well, they're making more sense with every subsequent listen. I want to listen to it again. Right now.

Glow in the dark
The cover of this record:

The title Songs in A&E, and the utilitarian Pantone 3285 (approx) coloured lettering against a white backing very much give it an NHS vibe. You can almost smell the disinfectant drying on newly mopped linoleum floor covering, and hear the warm laughter of Jamaican auxiliaries going off shift. Hospital not love scene? Hospital not calm ocean? A subterranean world of anaesthetics where sad white canoes forever sail downstream in the early hours of the morning? Not really - it's a wider view than that.

Songs:

Some real classics here - You Lie You Cheat, Sitting on Fire, Sweet Talk, Baby I'm Just A Fool, and more. Not as orchestrated as Floating (it doesn't need to be) and no discordantly invigorating workouts like (who could forget) The Individual.

The interludes: Harmony 1 (mellotron), Harmony 2 (piano), Harmony 3 (voice), Harmony 4 (the old man), Harmony 5 (accordian), Harmony 6 (glockenspiel) - 'noodlings' these most certainly ain't, Jimmy. Fleeting moments of ambient genius they most definitely are. Take the first of these: it's like your actual sound of the liminal zone between the living and the dead. The 'Harmony' tracks (named for Korine?) are so brief that they never outstay their welcome, while imprinting themselves indelibly on the mind's ear. Like the old Thames television ident but without the impending nuclear war vibe.

A work of disembodied genius. A nightworld unseen by those who walk past it in the corridor on their way to the coffee machine, thinking on their own luck.