Spacemen 3
The Perfect Prescription

THE REVIEW

Following the main path indicated by the Jesus and Mary Chain, consisting of layered guitar sounds drenched in feedback onto which exquisitely pop-flavored melodies were grafted, the two young guitarists Jason Pierce and Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember brought the Spacemen 3 project to life. In the band's early works, the sound characterized by walls of distorted guitars was perhaps still too indebted to the legacy of the aforementioned "fathers" and would find its complete and personal maturation only starting from this album: a concept-album on the experience of overdose.

The rarefied atmospheres, typically trance digressions, and exploration in different stylistic directions added greater heterogeneity to the group’s classic repertoire, which with The Perfect Prescription, brought to life one of the most interesting works of psychedelic music in the '80s.

The adrenaline-inducing “Take me to the Other Side” that opens the album moves with great vigor over a background of radioactive guitar reverberations, and together with “Things ‘ll Never Be the Same,” where electric neurotic ripples scattered in a soundscape close to noise orgy prod a singing of restless solitude, will be the only two tracks where it is possible to recognize the “old” Spacemen 3.

The delightful “Walkin’ With Jesus” is a ballad where acoustic guitar and a subdued organ lead the listener by the hand through the clouds and is followed by another romance “Ode to Street Hassle” in which the guitar motif is reiterated in loop in unison with the organ while a baritone spoken word gives a tangible materiality to the piece, which seems almost the flip side of the previous one.

“Ecstasy Symphony/Transparent Radiation (Flashback)” is a splendid piece that starts from Kosmic-music territories and then unfolds into a climax full of recollections and emotions thanks to an interplay of rare beauty and elegance between whispered singing, violin, and piano. It's as if the drug intake, at this point of the album, reaches its peak concerning the stimulation of our psychic and emotional centers.

This state of grace also extends to our body in the following “Feel so Good,” where calm voices with an almost beneficial power, acoustic guitars, and a muffled trumpet give our limbs a sensation of quiet torpor.

“Come Down Easy” is an airy country ride just “dampened” in the central part by electronic puffs. The album concludes with “Call the Doctor” where the voice with a spectral echo and a guitar that gradually tends to a controlled surge, give the suggestion of being the soul leaving its body in a coma due to overdose and watching it mid-air.

Splendid album, but for the writer, the subsequent Playing With Fire and Dreamweapon are even better...4 stars!