SINCE these expansive recordings from 1995 to 2002, Jason Pierce has shed his fixation with 100-piece orchestras and realised that bigger is not always better.
Not that Spiritualized's charity concert at Fibbers in York on March 3 will be a solo show - will it? - but Pierce has pared back on the excesses that over-inflated his psychedelic songs.
His nadir takes up disc two of Volume Two's compilation of singles, B sides and far fewer rarities than on last year's Volume One, as he fleshes out the not exactly bare bones of 1995's mesmerising Pure Phase, the maximum high of 1997's Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space and the sky candy of 2001's Let It Come Down.
Mellow beauty still abounds but amid live versions and radio edits, the glut of instrumentals is numbing, even if these polished and waxed recordings newly reveal the Michael Nyman in Pierce.
Updated: 09:09 Thursday, February 12, 2004
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