
When Jason Pierce left Spaceman 3 in 1991 he had bigger and more ambitious plans with his musical career.
In his last album with the Spaceman 3, Recurring, Pierce showed some poetic ability but it was not until he began his solo project, Spiritualized, that Pierce truly achieved poetic justice.
While Spiritualized is mainly known for their orchestric, psychedelic melodies, something Pierce took with him from Spaceman 3, the lyrics get substantially more sophisticated each album.
If you’ve listened to any of Pierce’s works you would know that his main theme is love. This is the case in Spiritualized’s first album, Lazer Guided Melodies, and in their eighth and most recent album And Nothing Hurt.
However, over time, Pierce takes love and makes it something more.
This is a verse from ‘Angel Sigh,’ a song on Spiritualized’s first album:
Girl it’s like an angels’ sigh
When I see you walkin’ by
Girl y’know the reason why
Girl y’know the reason why
While Pierce does incorporate an a-b-a-a rhyme scheme and even adds simile into his verse, the reader/listener knows exactly what he is talking about as it stated clearly. A good poet makes a reader think.
On ‘A Perfect Miracle,’ the first song of his 2018 masterpiece And Nothing Hurt shares the same theme as ‘Angel Sigh,’ love, but the lyrics are much more sophisticated and reading or hearing them may transport you to the world Pierce is imagining.
See the difference:
I’d like to sit around and dream you up a perfect miracle
Then take the clouds and have the sun proudly shining on you
Take the stars as well and line them up to spell “Darling, I love you”
And little by little watch it all come true
These lyrics invoke a warm and refreshing feeling. A feeling of hopefulness and loving. A feeling many novelists have tried so hard to transfer to their reader.
If a poem is a compressed novel, than ‘A Perfect Miracle’ is absolutely a poem because of its ability to capture Pierce’s mind and transfer it to the reader/listener who can then connect it to his or her’s own life.
Pierce’s poetic ability in And Nothing Hurt solidifies himself as one of the best songwriters in the world and sets the album apart from any other album of his career.
I like how you recognized the change in their songs being more instrumentally focused to the progression in the lyrics they began to use in their music. The sincerity and simple but meaningful stanza you included at the end really does convey how deeply he values love.
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