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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Hope you feel OK, January 1, 2001
"Abbey road" is a 4-track EP which will be primarily of interest to people who are looking to buy anything with the Spiritualized name on it. The packaging of this CD with its slipcase cover and the image which refers to the band's last album is quite nice, but there's nothing on this EP you cannot find in superior editions on "Ladies and gentlemen", so there's no point in shelling out the cash for a remake of "Come together" and two lackluster re-recordings of "Broken heart". The first track, an abridged take of "Come together" with multi-tracked guitars and crisper sound, leans heavily towards the pretentious pomp-rock end of Pierce's spectrum (no pun intended) and simply can't compare with the powerful yet still restrained album version. The problem with the "Broken heart" pieces is that they are also rather boring - neo-classical monstrosity with nothing really going on. The mix of "Broken heart" enhaces the symphonic sound of the original with a slightly different orchestral/vocal accompaniment but adds nothing really new. Maybe Jason Pierce wanted to break away from the spacy noise-rock sound one usually associates with Spiritualized, but were characterless remixes/re-recordings really the way to go? Much of the vocal harmonizing and arrangements of the aforementioned pieces are typical of the Beatles's latter-day work and sound fairly outdated today. The most interesting cut on this EP is Andrew Weatherall's (remixer of Primal Scream, MBV, and other early-'90s noise-rock bands) 15-minute deconstruction of "Come together", a track which is quite typical for Weatherall's own output under the Sabres of Paradise/Two Lone Swordsmen banner: The combination of strangely fractured rhythm constructions and dark atmospherics works best at a subliminal, almost subconscious level and provides an interesting sonic landscapes over which the listener can put his own thoughts and dreams. Not as breathtaking and progressive as Andrew's earlier remix efforts, but it still shows what can be done with Pierce's brilliant compositions. In conclusion, this EP might be worthy of consideration for the devoted one, if only as a curiosity piece, while the more casual fans who already own "Ladies and gentlemen.." or the double-disc live album will probably be wasting their time and money.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
searing EP details highs and lows of life, love, chemicals, August 18, 2000
By A Customer
The Abbey Road EP, Jason's most recent release save for the live discs, is a heartrending and sadly overlooked addition to the Spiritualized canon. Primarily issued to the English market because Jason felt he would rather re-record "Come Together" than bleep out its numerous instances of the "F-word", and recorded when he was assisting Dr John on the Anutha Zone album, this EP has a seething undercurrent of heroin come-down that sees it as a miniature summation of earlier material like the Spacemen 3 LP, The Perfect Prescription. Whereas that album telescoped the life cycle from birth to death into a single heroin trip, Abbey Road builds on the towering arrangement of "Come Together" (a Spector-like wall of noise closer to the live version than the version that appeared on the masterpiece, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space) to depict excess and the dirty high in the same sort of vein (nudge nudge, wink wink) as earlier classics like "Take Me to The Other Side". Jason growls out startling lines about the dead-end, ephemeral highs of chemical hedonism: "Little J's a (messed) up boy who's dulled the pain but killed the joy," then: "those tracks of time those tracks are mine, little J is occupied." The second track, "Broken Heart" was, simply put, the most devastatingly beautiful piece of music ever put to tape. This version doesn't quite scale the heady heights of either the tear-stained strings of the original album version or the soulful skyward harmonicas of the live version but its relative brevity does make it the most externally accessible of the three. Still, when the choirs coo in, helping Jason mutter "I've been told that this would heal, given time, Lord I have a broken heart", every relationship you've ever had that's disintegrated will flash by, and the beautiful barrage of blue and maroon-tinged strings will minister your wounded soul. The instrumental version that follows works in much the same fashion, stripped of the vocals and cutting down to the crushingly pure sounds of Jason's broken soul. Astonishing.This EP is no replacement for any of Jason's studio recordings or the cosmically transcendent live discs, but it IS a small glimpse into the psyche of the greatest artistic genius of our time -- maybe, of all time. (The American version of the Abbey Road EP, sold here, also adds Andrew Weatherall ('The Two Lone Swordsmen')'s remix of "Come Together", which doubles the disc's length. Its bizzarre deconstructionism is well suited to dark, headphone listening and does not disturb the EP's delicate cohesion - if anything, it adds depth and resonance to the rest of the record.)
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
terrible--drastically inferior versions, June 19, 1999
This is a shockingly terrible EP. This 'alternate' version of "Come Together" (for video/ airplay purposes) is toothless and has lame lyric changes--it sabotages the fact that it's a great song. The roughly 15-minute 2nd track is wholly aimless & awful--an all-time low point--does Jason seriously think this is good stuff? The "Broken Heart" versions here are unbearably lame as well. This EP, like the "Medication" EP before it, finds Jason offering drastically inferior versions of songs of which the album versions are brilliant, which is quite a strange & admittedly interesting phenomenon, however as far actual listening value of this EP is concerned, forget it.
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~ Spiritualized
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