Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space

I just got back from the Barbican, where I saw Spiritualized do the whole of Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space.

This is the second time the time funnel’s got me this week. The night before last I was in a supermarket, searching the shelves of spirits and sticky drinks for something to take to a friend’s house. Each bottle seemed to snatch me back to a day of drinking, 10, 15, 20 and getting on for 30 years ago. That makes me sound very old, but I first tasted alcohol very young and it was probably something sugary. Suddenly I found myself rolled inside snatches of memory, of parties, incidents, moments, even single thoughts I had with my mouth full of sweet stinging liquor.

The last time I saw Spiritualized live was in 1998 at Glastonbury. They were playing in the late afternoon. I’d just had a stupid row with my boyfriend in his band’s tour bus, and a line of something nasty, and I stomped off out into a thick field of mud with a can of beer. Goddamn tour buses with their engines on all weekend! I found a stage nearby and watched Bentley Rhythm Ace, I think it was. Then the sun began to set, and then came Jason and the band. Alone and wired I watched them, and their fuzzy, trippy, blue light show, and the sun went down and the moon came up – I might have invented the moon bit, but it fits anyway – and I can honestly say it was a spiritual experience, and it made my weekend, and probably my summer.

That album sat around in my life for a couple more years, being the soundtrack to many stoned bedtime headphone sessions before passing out. I remember wishing someone was into me enough to write a whole bloody amazing record about me, and feeling very jealous of that bloody keyboard woman.

And tonight it all came back. My friend Kim told me his friend Huw had a spare ticket, which felt like fate. I felt tears coming at the start, even before they’d begun playing, but I hung in there. I’m not enough of a muso to critique the interpretation, except that it was loud and sometimes punctuated by a violent strobe display that went on and on, faster and faster, to the point where half the audience had their hands over their already closed eyes. I thought I would throw up, in truth.

They did an encore, playing one song and ending with Silent Night. I thought they would spin it into a ten-minute cacophony of twisting trumpets and howling violins, but they played it very straight and ended it, gently, there.

I’d forgotten how that music had dragged me up and down and around and told me exactly where I was at the time. Thank you, Jason Pierce.