Spiritualized announce reissue of Songs in A&E

Songs in A&E – completed in the aftermath of J Spaceman’s near death hospitalization - is a collection of graceful, country-influenced songs that circle on familiar themes of love, death, hope and hopelessness. The reissue has been remastered for vinyl by Matt Colton at Metropolis Studios and features revamped artwork, including a new album cover. Accompanying the announcement are official videos for “Soul on Fire” and “You Lie You Cheat”.

Songs in A&E is a chilling record, and it was very nearly the last thing J Spaceman would ever release. In 2005, with the writing and recording well underway, Spaceman was rushed to the Royal London Infirmary with double pneumonia. The new album cover for this reissue is a photograph taken as he lay in what his close friends and family feared might be his deathbed. “We thought he’d gone,” recalled bandmate John Coxon at the time.

“I remember saying at the time”, he concludes, “that I felt like people who have these kinds of experiences become more charitable. They change or whatever. But I think I came back partly to the same disappointing person I was before. And sometimes I still feel the same. But a lot of people worked really hard to get me out of there and I also realised just how lucky I was.”

The recovery process for Spaceman was hard. Weighing just 85 pounds at 5’ 10”, he had to find the physical and creative strength to finish the record, and play live again. His eventual return to the stage came when he played with Spiritualized guitarist Tony Foster at a Daniel Johnston tribute show in London. “I was underweight and fragile and this was a gentle way of getting back on stage. It wasn’t my show for a start, and it was a small band, just myself on acoustic and Tony on a Fender Rhodes but it turned out to be really beautiful. Originally it was just going to be the two of us, but we ended up getting the strings and the girls’ choir and because it worked, it led to other things.”