Here's Spiritualized's 'And Nothing Hurt,' Their First New Album in 6 Years

J. Spaceman wanted to make a grand, luscious pop record when he sat down to write Spiritualized's eighth studio album. He holed himself up at home in East London, intent on crafting a "1960s Columbia Studios recording, but without ever going to the studio to put that thing together," according to an interview he gave to Owen Murphy at KEXP. "I feel like I found the hardest way to make a record like that. I should have written the songs, gone into the studio, and recorded it. I didn't do that, for whatever reason. Stupidity."

The result is And Nothing Hurt, his band's first project in six years, a collection of songs that seem as otherworldly as anything that Spiritualized have released in the past 28 years, but with a different slant. It's an unhurried, graceful, startlingly optimistic pop record that builds on five-decade-old classics while still sounding rich, modern, and hallucinatory. The whole thing is streaming over at NPR this morning, ahead of its September 7 release on Fat Possum/Bella Union. Do yourself a huge favor and listen to it immediately.

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