Welcome back to “No Skips,” a column where we go over albums that arguably have no skippable tracks. This week, the topic of discussion is an album near and dear to me: “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space” by the rock band Spiritualized. It was my favorite album for a year or two and remains up there on my all-time lists, so let’s delve into why that’s the case.
Released in 1997, “Ladies and Gentlemen” was a critical success upon impact for its complex arrangements and punctual commentary on addiction by vocalist and frontman Jason Pierce, or J. Spaceman as he is referred to. The sheer number of instruments used here continues to baffle me and makes each listen more impressive.
The album opens with the title track, and it singlehandedly kept me satisfied for an entire year before I listened to the whole album. The track begins as a vocal passage and space transmission sounds ruminate in the listener’s ears for one minute before the song goes from zero to 100 percent real quick. The multiple vocal layers are overwhelming to digest at first until the choir comes in — a prominent fixture on most songs on this record. The intensity suddenly mellows out to zero percent once again until this rollercoaster speeds up another hill during the starting seconds of the next song, “Come Together.”
Listeners of The Beatles’ track of the same name may find solace in the songs slightly mirroring each other lyrically and sonically. It’s unfortunate that the two were made nearly 25 years apart, though it’s been roughly another 25 years since Spiritualized released this album and drug addiction has managed to become even more of a pressing issue over this half-century.
“I Think I’m in Love” is the third track. Tyler, The Creator fans will recognize this coincidence because his strongest album, “IGOR” — which will get its own article on “No Skips” someday — also contains a song titled “I THINK” as its track three. While there’s no resemblance between the two tracks besides their nearly identical refrains, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Tyler has heard this masterpiece of an album.
Anyway, I think Spaceman may be admitting his love for the harmonica on this song, as it gets a lot of attention here, though the lyrics reflect a sad tale of loneliness mediated by drug usage. The speaker claims love for them is the combination of their “spike,” arm and spoon, as they “feel the warmth of the sun in the room,” a metaphor for heroin that has been utilized in songs such as “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers. Spaceman may be more literal with his songwriting, yet that’s what I enjoy about it because there’s no dancing around the negative effects of addiction.
However, the harmonica’s crowning moment is on “All of My Thoughts,” as its discordant notes clash with the drums before the composition strips back to Spaceman’s vocals and organ notes. The addition of brass — or possibly saxophones — shows how all of these moving parts are surrounding Spaceman and helping him, or whoever the speaker is, through their journey toward recovery. “Stay With Me” is a wonderful song for how mellow it manages to be whilst bolstering loud electric guitars and distortion during the final minute-and-a-half. As was done in previous songs, however, the band one-ups themselves yet again on “Electricity.”
Spaceman uses a voice with a deeper register on the album’s highest-octane song. As a standalone track — since it was released as a single a month after the album’s release — “Electricity” keeps the momentum going all the way through as Spaceman sings, “Let the light be forever green.” After the high comes the low, though. Spaceman’s brutally honest songwriting peaks on the short and sweet “Home of the Brave” where he laments, “Sometimes have my breakfast right off of a mirror / And sometimes, I’ll have it right out of a bottle.” The instrumentation begins to drown his vocals out, possibly as the speaker loses themselves in the substances that they try to kill the pain with.
The prior line, “When I’m not with her, I’m not all myself” alludes to this being a breakup album (coincidentally — like “IGOR”). Spaceman actually did have a romantic falling out with the band’s keyboardist, Kate Radley, around this time, as she ended up marrying The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft when these songs were being created. We don’t know what else Spaceman was dealing with during this time, so I won’t make assumptions, but it could provide context to heart-wrenching songs like “Broken Heart,” where the French horn and strings help supplement Spaceman’s fragile delivery of lines like, “And I’m crying all the time / I have to keep it covered up with a smile.”
“Cool Waves” is a serene song with gentle choir vocals and fluttering flute passages. Combined with the slow opener that leads into triumphant horn parts, some would consider it a proper ending to the album, if not for the 17-minute wild ride to follow, “Cop Shoot Cop.” Opening with a delightful piano solo backed by some bells, a song of this magnitude is bound to feature multiple acts. Minutes pass by before Spaceman drops the first of multiple two-line verses, referencing substance abuse yet again. I appreciate songs that take their time, as the moment of anticipation builds up and releases into a five-to-six-minute cacophony of noise before the choir returns and Spaceman delivers his most somber set of lines on the album.
While the final refrain of “I will love you” is ambiguous in nature, I’m under the idea that it’s about the journey and not the destination. The speaker throughout the album understands they’re fucked up, and while they may want to either wallow in their misery or try to get better, they’re better off than before. Considering the opening words on the album are “All I want in life’s a little bit of love / To take the pain away,” I think the speaker has grown in the sense that instead of asking for love, they’re willing to provide it for someone by the end of the album.
Close readers may notice I failed to mention the instrumental tracks “The Individual” and “No God Only Religion,” and that’s because I’ll briefly bitch about them now. “No God Only Religion” has some substance to it, such as the church bell in the beginning (hence the title), and it’s a good tune, but both are skeletons compared to the rest of the tracks because there are no vocals.
The noisy instrumentation juxtaposed with Spaceman’s vulnerable vocals is a main selling point for “Ladies and Gentlemen” so it’s difficult to argue these two tracks are even on par with the others. The thing with an album like this, however, is that any shortcomings are reconcilable when considering the high quality of every other track on here. Besides, I mentioned in my first article for “No Skips” that I’m under the impression that interlude/instrumental tracks shouldn’t detract from an album’s placement or absence from this column, but I could do with or without these tracks.
Spaceman and crew liken their music on this album to prescription drugs. The gatefold and back of the vinyl version’s jacket feature striking imagery of a pharmacy and similar instructions on how to “take” the music as you would see on the side of a pill bottle. My pressing also came with a poster saying, “Spiritualized is used to treat the heart and soul,” as it has done for me the past five years. Stay safe out there and enjoy the music responsibly.