About this Artist

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Editorial Reviews

Jason Pierce is no stranger to the feedback-drenched garage rock that kicks off Amazing Grace, Spiritualized's fifth album. Although his group is better known for lushly orchestrated, gospel-tinged recordings such as 1997's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Pierce has returned to the heady sounds of his youth with Spacemen 3, a group equally inspired by the Stooges, the 13th Floor Elevators, and a battery of mind-altering drugs. In fact, he recently told the NME that the rawness of groups such as the White Stripes inspired him to crank the amp volumes back up to 11 -- and the clamoring fuzz and drone of songs such as "This Little Life of Mine" and "She Kissed Me (It Felt like a Hit)," Amazing Grace's opening pair, bears that out. Even so, Pierce still finds time to bare his soul, revealing the dangerous flip side to his aggressive search for the high -- whether attained by sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, or religious ecstasy. On "Hold On," Pierce sounds as if he's scraping up all remaining psychic energy on his plea to hold on "to those that you love / 'cause...death cannot take what you've already lost," his desperate voice bobbing atop a gospel-infused arrangement of acoustic guitar, piano, and harmonica. Amazing Grace is split between confessional moments, such as the sweeping "Oh, Baby" and "Lord Let It Rain on Me," where Pierce's heartache is cushioned by a gospel choir -- it's no accident that this disc shares a name with Aretha's towering return-to-the-church album -- and more upbeat, garage-styled rockers, such as the Dylan-inspired romp "Cheapster," and the amalgam, for Pierce and his audience, is still transcendent. Lydia Vanderloo, Barnes & Noble

Customer Reviews

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