Pitchfork

Five years since Spiritualized's last record, tepidly received garage-rocker Amazing Grace, versatile psychedelic traveler Jason Pierce goes back to the orchestra-aided earnestness and redemption of landmark Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space with "Soul on Fire". The video for the track, from the forthcoming Songs in A&E, is more ice than fire, alternating between leisurely shots of Pierce lying prostrate against a bleak, snow-swept landscape and scenes where he's in a hospital, the drugs not working, apparently. "Freedom's just another word/ When you've no one left to hurt," Pierce sings in his high, weary voice, against the kind of quietly soulful, folk-flecked arrangement Blur used to great success on 13 singles "Tender" and "No Distance Left to Run". Good enough for me; now ask Kris Kristofferson.

[from Songs in A&E; due 05/19/08 in the UK and Europe on Universal/Spaceman and due 06/03/08 in the U.S. on Fontana International/Spaceman Records]