It is just four days before Christmas but Jason Pierce seems oblivious to festive cheer. The leader of influential space-rockers Spiritualized, sitting in the home studio where he has spent the last two years creating the band's forthcoming seventh album "Sweet Heart Sweet Light," has issues on his mind.
"What makes me upset is, I just think everyone is constantly looking back," Pierce begins in the quiet yet exasperated manner he adopts throughout our chat. "It's just, 'Here's our classic album from 15 years ago.' If you want a classic album then write one now! Forget all this 'they were the great times'. Time allows things to be great. With most of these bands you're just praying they aren't going to play anything new. Who wants to hear anything f-cking new from them? I want to make something great. And it has to be now."
Uncharacteristically grand words they may be (Pierce's reputation for being prickly and disingenuous during interviews precedes him) but his music is grander still. "Sweet Heart Sweet Light," Spiritualized's first album in four years, is shaping to be Pierce's best in at least the past 10. Honing all the preoccupations in Pierce's artistic cannon — psychedelia, gospel, heartbreak, religion, drugs — he describes the record as "a love letter to the music I love".