Spacemen 3
Recurring

Kember/Pierce final act. It's 1991, and by now the acid-house music craze has exploded in England, thanks in large part to the Primal Scream of Screamadelica and the Happy Mondays of that spaced-out Shaun Ryder. The Stone Roses were riding high after the extraordinary commercial success of Fools Gold, a true anthem for the burgeoning Ecstasy and synthetic drugs culture.

And those two rascals from Rugby? Peter Kember was detoxing from heroin, and Jason Pierce was now absorbed by the future group that he would soon form with Spacemen 3's rhythm section, namely Spiritualized. Recurring sees the light when Spacemen 3 practically no longer existed. In fact, if the two former partners met on the street, they wouldn't fight, but they wouldn't greet each other either. The fact that the album is perfectly split in half attests to this climate of separation, as indeed the first side is a Kember solo album, and the second one is Pierce's. This sort of division could already be tasted among the songs of Playing With Fire, where the only track co-written by both was the instrumental 'Suicide'. Sonic Boom takes center stage immediately with the opening Big City, a cyclical symphony that winks at both dance and acid house, redoes Mudhoney with a potent cover of When Tomorrow Hits, dips into oriental music in the beautiful Why Couldn't I See, and into the acid and typically sixties pop of I Love You and Just To See You Smile. On his part, Mr. Jason "Spaceman" Pierce indulges in his passion for mystical gospel in the single Hypnotized, in Feel So Sad, and in Sometimes, while in Billy Whizz/Blue1 he reprises the chord progression of Call the Doctor (in The Perfect Prescription) to tell a story, that talks about amphetamine trips ("I meet up MaryAnne, She introduce me to Billy Whizz").

That's not quite how I wanted the story of one of my favorite bands to end, a bit like what happened with Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd. I have all the respect for Spiritualized, but they simply can't hold a candle to the Astronauts, and solo Kember was too stoned on methadone or who knows what else to realize that he might be overdoing it with those blessed drones. The fact remains that personally, I like the album, I don't like that it didn't have a sequel.