J Spaceman, John Coxon & Spiritualized - Music for William Eggleston's Stranded in Canton (2024) Hi-Res

When Jason Pierce headed off to Memphis to mix Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space, he embarked on a pilgrimage that many British guitar players have taken over the years. Beyond the blues and soul traditions that are part of that city's heritage, Pierce was also fascinated with the totality of its artistic culture, and how the city's unique position as a way station between the Delta and the urban "North" affected things beyond its music scene. One of Memphis's most well-regarded visual artists is William Eggleston—whose iconic photo “The Red Ceiling" is best known for its appearance on the cover of Big Star's Radio City. (The eye-poppingly intense image was not shot for the album, although Eggleston was friends with Alex Chilton and well-ensconced in the local scene.) So, it's none too surprising that, when Eggleston's documentary Stranded In Canton was restored and shown for a live audience in London in 2015, Pierce was eager to help provide a live score. The 1974 film itself was shot in black and white and documented the Memphis scene in all its diversity and weirdness, presenting a far more rough-hewn vision of the city than Eggleston's still photography. Pierce, along with his Spiritualized bandmate John Coxon, composed a musical framework for the one-off performance that gave it structure but also allowed the two (and the other musicians on stage) to improvise along with the film, to the extent that Pierce even had a volume pedal that adjusted the loudness of certain parts of dialogue while the group was playing. The result was an organic accompaniment to a singular film, and with this release, folks who weren't able to make it to the Barbican Gallery screening can now hear its uniqueness. This music is Pierce at his loosest and most minimal, a far cry from the maximalism for which he is best known. The guitar work is rich and textured, but the structures are spare, giving plenty of space for the spoken bits from the film to provide context and emotional intensity. In fact, whether it's the juke joint bounce of "Last Week I Took a Trip" or the bluesy ambience of "Back Up William," none of these pieces would make sense outside the context from the film. As further evidence, the largely instrumental "What Train Blues" sounds half-baked. The phlegmy coughs that open "Love for the Asking" yield to eight minutes of feedback-drenched chaos that, surprisingly, hearkens back to Dreamweapon-era Spacemen 3, and the fuzzy guitars of "I Don't Know What I Can Possibly Do" make the song sound like it could be a rough Spiritualized demo, but that's as close as any of this gets to being what one might expect from a Jason Pierce project.