Lifting the spirits

 

It's been a horrible day of football, but in trying to keep with my new non-cynical attitude I'm thinking of nice comforting things, such as the above album. I have been metaphorically and literally kicking myself for the last week, as it was only then that I heard all of the critically-adored, all-time classic status-achieving Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space for the first time. 

What on earth was I doing back in the summer of 1997 that was so important to stop me listening to this? Sadly, the answer is: working in some godawful temp jobs, trying to put off the imminent prospect of going to university, and listening to Be Here sodding Now. I was lucky enough to settle into university, absorb myself in trendy studenty music and become slightly less of an uncultured loser, but despite falling in love with Broken Heart on a Q compilation CD the rest of this album went resolutely unlistened-to. 

In hindsight I can kinda see why: it's much-heralded calling cards - long tracks, jazzy improvisational leanings, lack of regular indie-pop songs - are things I've traditionally shied away from, my musical tastes being quite boringly conservative when it comes down to it. Old age does sometimes bring with it a desire to discover missed things from your past though, if only so one can mither on about missed opportunites and suchlike, and so reviews of the recent reissue of ... Floating in Space prompted me to finally give it a go. 

Basically, it's fantastic. Instantly rocketing into my all-time favourite albums list, in fact (and obviously I've listened to like, nearly every album ever so that's definitive). All those aforementioned traits that put me off are precisely the things that make it so great. Songs like I Think I'm in Love and even the 17-minute Cop Shoot Cop simply need to be that long in order to breathe and blossom. Jason Pierce's approach of piling in elements of jazz, gospel, krautrock and any other styles he could think of and employing a battery of musicians to play them means that it feels truly epic and profound. As much as I've been kicking myself for missing out on it for so long (and consequently for not seeing them perform it last year), I'm ecstatically happy in equal measure to have finally discovered the thing. Is that positive enough?

Go on, have a youtube vid:

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