Album review: Spiritualized, ‘Sweet Hear...

Album review: Spiritualized, ‘Sweet Hear...

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Jason Pierce, the guru of Spiritualized, uses a giant canvas for his art rock, but manages to make his music sound so intimate.

Grandeur fascinates Jason Pierce. The guru of Spiritualized creates vast vistas with his music, peopled with a 100-person orchestra, a 25-member choir, a full rock band, all flailing around his own array of keyboards, glockenspiels and guitars.

So how do songs so heavily larded end up sounding so intimate?

Since the early 90s, Pierce has created dense forays into the heart of art-rock that, somehow, retain the personal tone of a lonely singer-songwriter. The fact that hes Spiritualizeds sole controlling member helps. But its harder to explain another key irony of his sound: How it can seem so trippy and so trenchant at once?

To highlight that first quality, Pierce operates under the stage name: J. Spaceman. More, he titled his most celebrated CD, Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.

Last year, Pierce played that classic album in full at a mind-blowing show at Radio City. Happily, he has retained that tone and standard for his sixth CD, Sweet Heart, Sweet Light.

Its his best since his signature disc. Again, it keeps lurching between heavily distorted psychedelia and starkly clear ballads, ones that draw on forms as earthbound as gospel and R&B. The way Pierce prizes those shifts connects him to Pink Floyds mid-70s work, circa Dark Side.

Not that they sound literally similar. Just the vibe connects them, as well as the attention to sound quality. Sweet Heart has the kind of depth audio-nerds swoon for. Theres a hi-def sense of space, looming enough to hold the gigantitudePierce seeks.

The albums 60-minute expanse covers a lot of ground, from the pastoral overture (charmingly titled huh?) to the Velvet Underground-like sneering cool of Hey Jane, which comes complete with one of the stars patented freakout sections of glorious noise.

For my taste, there are never enough of these, although Pierce achieves nearly as much abstraction in the psychedelic tune of Get What You Deserve (which recalls George Harrisons Within You and Without You) and in Heading for the Top Now, with its shards of guitar stabbing at the brass, bass and strings.

The lyrics Pierce attaches to his flights might seem too woe-is-me for words, if you didnt know about his harrowing history of medical issues. (He has faced everything from respiratory problems to a degenerative liver disease over the years.) Those battles may help explain the ver y personal and internalized nature of his songs. Either way, its stirring how Pierce can make music this sweeping seem so close.

Spiritualized plays May 7 at 8 p.m. at Terminal 5, 610 W. 56th St.; (212) 582-6600.