Jason Pierce has said he’s currently “living in the studio” working on the next Spiritualized album.
Speaking at Reykjavik’s Iceland Inspires Festival, he also told NME that the follow-up to 2008’s ‘Songs In A&E’, due next year, would contain more pop songs.
“I always shy away from anything I write that sounds like a pop song, things like ‘Soul On Fire’ or ‘Stop Your Crying’,” he explained. “This time I’m embracing songs like that and seeing what happens. I’m not fighting it any more. I’m in the middle of the album now, so it’s kind of weird doing any shows at the moment. I’m so focused on it. I get really single-minded, so I’m basically living on my own in the studio. I’ve got a rough timeline, it’ll be out next year.”
He added the album’s new sound was partly inspired by the ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ shows he staged last year, which saw Pierce and his band play the 1997 classic in its entirety.
“The shows didn’t change my opinion of the record, it’s still a great album, but it was a dream to play it all live and go through those songs again. Normally when you tour people want new stuff,” he explained. “It was weird to have that album sitting around for 13 years and then go and do it, and all of the audience brought their own thing to it.”
Pierce performed an ‘Acoustic Mainlines’ set in Iceland’s capital, backed by eight gospel singers and a six-piece string section. He rolled through Spiritualized tracks including ‘Anything More’, ‘Lord Let It Rain On Me’ and ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’, two Spacemen 3 songs, ‘Walking With Jesus’ and ‘Amen, and also covered Daniel Johnston’s ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’.
Speaking of the Iceland Inspires event, Pierce said he accepted the invitation to headline because the people of Iceland had been good to him while making the ‘Soul On Fire’ video there in 2008.
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“Everyone was so helpful,” he recalled. “They made a £5,000 video look like it cost £100,000.”