Spacemen 3 - "Playing With Fire" (Taang! 1989)

Last week, I rediscovered Interpol's debut LP in a big way, and I'm still diggin' it. But, today was all about Spacemen 3's "PLAYING WITH FIRE." Spacemen 3 is a band from the mid-80s and early 90s that was considered one of the first "space rock" bands. This means they rely on simplicity, ambience, sparse drumming, repetition, and Velvet Underground influence. Jason Pierce, the core member of Spiritualized, started in Spacemen 3 as one of the band's two songwriters.

"PLAYING WITH FIRE" is Spacemen 3's third album, and it's astonishing that they pull of a great rock album without any live drumming. Drum machines are used on a few tracks here, but they don't dictate the rhythm at all. Rather, the tremelo-ing keyboard drones and lush guitars accomodate rhythm all by themselves, and the drums are mere filler, except on the "rock" song, "Revolution." The only other band I can think of that wrote a great rock album without drums is The Young Marble Giants in 1980 on their debut, "COLOSSAL YOUTH."'

"PLAYING WITH FIRE" is gorgeous all the way through, even during the 11-minute noise drone, "Suicide," which will drive you insane if you listen to it enough. I can vouch. But, the stand-alone masterpiece is Pierce's "Lord, Can You Hear Me?", a ballad that's as haunting and sad as it is beautiful: "All my love has left my side / Can't get enough life to keep me satisfied / and I've lost about evrything / Lord, look what state I'm in." Of course, all that drama is coming from a severe drug addict, Jason Pierce, who religiously used heroin during his stay in both Spacemen 3 and Spiritualized.

Make no mistake, "Playing With Fire" is not for sunny afternoons (although today was sunny). But, if you're feeling weary, or if you feel like leaving the planet for 45 minutes, or both, get a hold of this ethereal ambience. I've been "injecting" this music into my brain since I was a sophomore in high school, and it's as addictive as the substances that went into the recording process. For a more blissed-out, easy-going experience, check out their second album, "THE PERFECT PRESCRIPTION." I can't decide which I love more. Spacemen 3 are psychedelic and soothing all at once - they ARE your brain on drugs, they just take the drugs for you. So goes their self-inscribed motto/title of their rarities collection: TAKING DRUGS TO MAKE MUSIC TO TAKE DRUGS TO. Yeah, they kinda over-do the whole drug label, but it's who they are, for better AND worse. We get the music, they get double-pneumonia and respirators.