Spiritualized have announced news of their new studio album, Everything Was Beautiful, due for release 25 February 2022 via Bella Union.
The band have also shared a video for cathartic and besotted lead track and album opener ‘Always Together With You’ – watch HERE – and announced news of an extensive international tour running from March through to May 2022, including a headline performance at London’s Roundhouse on 10 May.
The opening track ‘Always Together With You‘ is a reworking / supercharging of a track originally released in demo quality in 2014.
While some people imploded in the lockdowns and isolation of the epidemic, others were thriving. “I felt like I’d been in training for this my whole life” says J Spaceman.
He was referring to his fondness for isolation and when you reframe loneliness as “beautiful solitude” then it isn’t so bad. He would walk 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.”
Spaceman plays 16 different instruments on Everything Was Beautiful which was put down at 11 different studios, as well as at his home. He also employed more than 30 musicians and singers including his daughter Poppy, long-time collaborator and friend John Coxon, string and brass sections, choirs and finger bells and chimes from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. So there’s a lot going on.
“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.”
Eventually the mixes got there, and Everything Was Beautiful was achieved. The result is some of the most “live” sounding recordings that Spiritualized have released since the Live At The Albert Hall record of 1998, around the time of Ladies & Gentlemen, We Are Floating In Space.
All these layers, all these details, the year-long mixes, the making sense of it all and the lives lived within these lyrics; for somebody so famously unconfident of his own abilities, isn’t this a punishing thing to keep doing? “Yeah, but I like what I do. There’s a line from Jonathan Meades that’s about having all the attributes to being an artist. ‘Paranoia, vanity, selfishness, egotism, sycophancy, resentment, moral nullity and more idiot than idiot savant.’ “And that’s what it feels like, this kind of thing. You’re your own worst enemy and biggest supporter. “There’s a ‘Of course this is worth it. It’s me’ and then this kind of deep doubt of ‘What the fuck is this all about?’ “And then ‘Why is it important?’ and then knowing there’s no easy answer. But it’s there. I know it’s there.”
Spiritualized’s new album ‘Everything Was Beautiful’ is due for release 25 February 2022 via Bella Union and is available pre-order here: https://ffm.to/everythingwasbeautiful
Spiritualized Spring 2022 Live Dates
02 Mar – Utrecht, Netherlands – TivoliVredenberg Grote Zaal tickets
03 Mar – Copenhagen, Denmark – DR Studie 2 tickets
04 Mar – Oslo, Norway – Parkteatret tickets
05 Mar – Gothenburg, Sweden – Pustervik tickets
07 Mar – Berlin, Germany – Passionskirche
08 Mar – Hamburg, German – Laeiszhalle
09 Mar – Köln, Germany – Gloria
10 Mar – Paris, France – La Gaîté Lyrique tickets
11 Mar – Brussels, Belgium – Ancienne Belgique tickets
31 Mar – Dallas, TX, Granada Theater tickets
01 Apr – Austin, TX – Scoot Inn tickets
03 Apr – Santa Fe, NM – Meow Wolf tickets
04 Apr – Denver, CO – Ogden Theatre tickets
05 Apr – Salt Lake City, UT – The Commonwealth Room tickets
07 Apr – Seattle, WA – Neptune tickets
08 Apr – Portland, OR – Revolution Hall tickets
09 Apr – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom tickets
28 Apr – Bath, UK – The Forum tickets
29 Apr – Cambridge, UK – Corn Exchange tickets
30 Apr – Brighton, UK – Dome tickets
02 May – Birmingham, UK – Symphony Hall tickets
04 May – Gateshead, UK – Sage tickets
05 May – Glasgow, UK – SWG3 Galvanizers tickets
07 May – Dublin, IE – Olympia Theatre tickets
08 May – Manchester, UK – Bridgewater Hall tickets
09 May – Nottingham, UK – Royal Concert Hall tickets
10 May – London, UK – Roundhouse tickets
