Straight and the Narrow, by Spiritualized.
This song makes much more sense in the context of, well, all of Spiritualized’s songs, which have a lot to do with drugs, frankly. And I was positive I had already done one Spiritualized song, but I guess those were all Spacemen 3 so far? OK, there’s a body of work to unpack a little further then, and a couple stories to tell.
- At Sophie’s bar on 5th between A and B in the years we, uh, frequented it, the jukebox had the first Spiritualized CD and it’s important to note it was the CD, because the whole thing was divided up into just four tracks, so you could easily get 12 minutes of a Spiritualized soundtrack to your evening conversation or pinball game for fifty cents. (Though I preferred Curtis Mayfield’s Move On Up for the latter purpose).
- Relatively late in my run in New York [EDIT: Nope, it was in 1997.], I saw Spiritualized play Webster Hall? Yes, I’m pretty sure that happened, and I went alone? And it was lovely. I remember everyone marking out when they played Electricity and it was a reminder, again, that when you learn about bands somewhat after the fact and listen to whole albums, you really don’t know which ones were the singles that people are excited about. See also: The Sea and Cake (Parasol), Stereolab (Super Electric), etc.
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An electric track! A tambourine track! Backup vocals! It’s Saturday, and the new dog is having a restful afternoon with me. (He is snoring.)