Spiritualized in a daze at First Avenue

Jason Pierce spent all of last night's Spiritualized concert behind his music stand. / Photos by Leslie Plesser

One of the last shows at First Avenue before a new sound system is put into place, last night's Spiritualized concert proved there's really nothing wrong with the old speaker stacks. But the club's stage and lighting rigs might need a washing and polishing.

Frontman Jason Pierce – and "frontman" should probably be written in quotes – barely moved and stayed in the dark throughout the droning, two-hour rockathon. It was if the British rocker's sleek snakeskin shoes were stuck in glue up there. Good thing First Ave is already a great listening room, because the most compelling part of the show for the only half-full crowd was simply letting the band's slow-wave jams wash over you.

Of course, Pierce's lack of showmanship came as no surprise to longtime fans of the enigmatic former Spaceman 3 creator, who has recently been holed up more than usual fighting a degenerative liver disease. Wednesday's show was the kickoff to his U.S. tour behind Spiritualized's seventh and perhaps best album, "Sweet Heart Sweet Light," tinged with life-and-death lyrics. The seven-piece band (including two female backup singers) had no trouble finding the life in the new material, starting with the woozily rocking nine-minute opener "Hey Jane" and soon followed by the mean-grooving "Headin' for the Top Now."

Along with the older nuggets, "Lord, Let It Rain on Me" and "Lay Back in the Sun," the first half of the show was energized by reverberating guitar jams and truly spiritualized, hopeful lyrics. Things got pretty dark and drab in the second half of the set, though. Hazed-out tunes such as "Mary" and "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" sounded as stagnant and immobile musically as Pierce looked physically. Even the Syd Barrett-ready images on the movie-screen backdrop in these songs were remarkably boring.

It took a full 45 minutes or so for things to finally pick back up with "So Long You Pretty Thing," another long, slow-building epic that closes out the new album and perfectly set up the set's closer, an amped-up and wigged-out "Come Together." The encore then came off like a microcosmic recap of the entire show: An uplifting, beautifully frazzled nugget, "Electricity," followed by another dreary and dudly one, "Cop Shoot Cop." But at least we got a thank-you from Pierce at the end -- yep, his only words to the crowd.

Click here for Leslie Plesser's photo gallery from the concert.