After losing no fewer than three of their most important members, most observers thought the game was up for Spiritualised and their mercurial leader Jason Pierce. Thankfully, the band's first album for four years suggests that personal setbacks have done nothing to limit their vaulting sense of ambition. Let It Come Down sounds like the ultimate morning-after album, a bitter plea for redemption after all the usual excesses have taken their toll. Crucially, the music rises to the occasion - 100-piece orchestras construct towering symphonies of sound and take Spitualised's old brand of narcotic space-rock to an entirely different level. The result is a breathtaking, inspirational record which at a stroke puts most of Pierce's contemporaries in the shade.
