Featured Essay: Pure Phase by Spiritualized 30th Anniversary

by Chase Harrison

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Pure Phase, the overlooked second album by beloved neo-psych space rockers Spiritualized. The album occupies an interesting spot in their discography as it’s sandwiched between their widely acclaimed and influential debut album Lazer Guided Melodies, and their canonized masterpiece, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space. While it was well-received overall, it’s the only album by the band that Pitchfork hasn’t reviewed, it scored only a decent 3.5/5 stars on AllMusic (the second lowest of their career), and it has just the 7th most reviews of their career on RateYourMusic. I’d like to suggest it’s long overdue for a reappraisal.

Pure Phase is not only my favorite Spiritualized record but my favorite record of all time. The opener “Medication” has to be one of the greatest songs about drug addiction ever recorded. “All of My Tears” is a vastly improved update of the Spacemen 3 track “So Hot (Wash Away All of My Tears)” as Pierce transformed it from a minimalist blues number to a tranquil, string and effect-laden gospel song. “These Blues” is another update of a song written for his previous band. While Spacemen 3 was known for its hypnotic drones and later-era Spiritualized would become known for its maximalist walls of sound, this album splits the difference with subtler, more serene layers of sound. The newfound electronic influence is evident as the band even released “Pure Phase Tones for DJs” as a companion piece which was comprised of a single sample played at incrementally pitched-up intervals to represent a full range of keys. All the tones can be played at various RPMs to produce different keys/frequencies. The band would continue to use these tones between songs during live shows for decades.

While the album often soars the way you’d expect a work by Spiritualized to, it’s also a more grounded and insular listening experience, ideal for headphones (or to “play loud ‘n drive fast,” as plainly stated in the original liner notes). Pure Phase was made by using two separate mixes to create a phasing ambient drone that envelopes each track and gives it a distinct sound the band hasn’t attempted to replicate since. It was also the album most influenced by underground electronic music of the time while still proudly wearing gospel inspiration on its sleeve (a glow-in-the-dark one, at that). This gives it an innovative sound that’s unlike most of the neo-psych/shoegaze adjacent bands of the time. As one of the standout tracks “Let it Flow” (another drug-fueled song, to no one’s surprise) suggests, the record glides along seamlessly and is best enjoyed all at once. It was on the next album cover that Spiritualized would winkingly advocate “1 tablet, 70 minutes.” But that serving suggestion could have worked just as well for Pure Phase, which sits at 68 minutes and begins with the line, “everyday I wake up and I take my medication and I spend the rest of the day waiting for it to wear off.”

There’s an unhurried prettiness and tranquility to Spiritualized that few, if any, guitar-based bands of the era approached. But there are also the expected scuzzy psych/free jazz freakouts, crescendos, horns, woodwinds, and strings of The Balanescu Quartet predicting what was to come on Ladies and Gentlemen and Let it Come Down. The ascendent album closer “Feel Like Goin’ Home” is (mostly) an instrumental based around a riff that continues to build until it collapses in on itself. Including the Spacemen 3 days, repetition has always been a major part of Pierce’s songwriting. He’s able to take simple three chord ideas and dress them up in a way that are unrecognizable by the end of a six-minute song. There’s not a clear radio single on here, the most obvious being “Lay Back in the Sun” where Pierce sings in his trademark, unbothered, sedated hush on the chorus, “gonna have good times, babe. Good dope, good fun.” Then there are two, six and seven-minute instrumental ambient drone pieces, Electric Mainline (the band was briefly renamed Spiritualized Electric Mainline, which appears on the cover) and the title track. For good measure, there are three other shorter (largely) instrumental tracks, “Electric Phase,” the Laurie Anderson cover “Born Never Asked” and the album closer. The result is a varied but cohesive, lush, atmospheric record that’s best played altogether.

Jason “Spaceman” Pierce himself, as recently as 2021 (to The Quietus), has called Pure Phase his favorite Spiritualized album. He points to the phasing technique and Kate Radley’s keyboards (which added a distinct, shimmery layer to the first three records). But for all the sonic effects and details, the bottom line is the songs here are incredible. “Let it Flow” serves as a sort of summary for the album as a whole

Here it comes and then it goes

And it hits me, takes me home

I don’t know where I’m goin'

Let it flow

And I don’t know where I’ve been

But I’d do it all again

All I wanted was a taste

Enough to waste the day

Just enough to make me sick

I can’t get too much of it

While the direct influence of Pure Phase is hazier than the clear impact Lazer Guided Melodies has had on dream pop and Ladies and Gentlemen has had on (orchestral) space rock, its touchpoints can be found all over music released in the decades since. Slowdive’s Pygmalion, released the following year, has a strikingly similar ambient, electronic, neo-psych atmosphere. Maligned at the time as a departure from the pure noisy shoegaze of Souvlaki, it’s since been reevaluated as an influential forebear of post-rock. Also released in 1996, Bowery Electric’s Beat explored similar territory with a greater emphasis on the pulsing rhythms of trip-hop. Seefeel – who toured with Spiritualized in 1995 – have melded guitars with electronics since the early 90s (and released two excellent comeback albums last year). Since then, Sigur Rós, Deerhunter, Yo La Tengo, Beach House, and Animal Collective (who have specifically named dropped Spacemen 3 a major influence) have all dabbled in the combination of sounds that J. Spaceman and co. mined on “Pure Phase.” The current neo-shoegaze wave is filled with examples but Philadelphia bands They Are Gutting a Body of Water and Full Body 2 are notable for heavily incorporating electronic music into their wall-of-sound approach.

When asked to describe the band to the uninitiated, I often refer to them as “gospel for agnostics and addicts.” Listening to Spiritualized can be a cathartic, life-affirming, near religious experience unto itself. Who needs god when music like this exists?

Born in Durham, NC and raised outside of Baltimore, MD, Chase has spent the last 18 years in Philadelphia, PA and Brooklyn, NY. He holds a Master of Advanced Studies in American Media & Popular Culture and currently works as a Content Manager with past experience in the film, food, and beverage spaces. He has also performed as a DJ and makes electronic music under the name Cult Posture. He has seen Spiritualized perform live six times since 2008. You can find him on Instagram or Letterboxd.

I Have That on Vinyl is a reader supported publication. If you enjoy what’s here please consider donating to the site’s writer fund: venmo // paypal. Tips go toward paying writers, an editor and for site maintenance