Someone saying that a shoegaze album is better than My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless is usually contrarianism along the same lines as “The Beatles suck” or “RC is better than Coca-Cola.” However, the case could be made that Spiritualized’s 1997 masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space is at least more illustrative of the dream-pop credo. While Loveless is essentially a collection of conventional pop songs gussied up in £250,000 worth of special effects, Ladies and Gentlemen is organically massive, leaving no sonic stone unturned. Over the course of 70 minutes, songwriter Jason Pierce crafts somnolent pocket symphonies using everything from guitars and vintage keyboards to accordions, violins, flutes, flugelhorns, and a full choir. Somehow, Ladies and Gentlemen manages to sound both perfectly realized and completely aimless. It’s British dream-pop’s self-indulgent apogee.

by Morgan Troper