Getting Spiritualized with Harmony

PROFILE. “I got a hurricane inside my veins and I want to stay forever,” is just one of the many haunting lyrics talking about life and death in “Songs in A & E,” the new critically acclaimed album by beautiful, atmospheric British band Spiritualized. The eerie part is that these tracks were penned before intense frontman/maestro Jason Pierce almost died from a near fatal bout of pneumonia. He says the lyrics he wrote before his illness have a new meaning.

“Initially I found it really harrowing and they haunted me,” says Pierce. “The first song lyric I heard was, ‘If you know about life you hold on tight and don’t let go.’ It didn’t end up on the album.”

After his recovery, director Harmony Korine recruited Pierce to compose the soundtrack for “Mister Lonely,” an off-beat movie in which Diego Luna plays a Michael Jackson impersonator who falls in love with Samantha Morton’s Marilyn Monroe impersonator. The gig pumped new life into “Songs in A & E,” which had been a work-in-progress for more than three years.

“I met Harmony when I was really at my lowest,” says Pierce. “He’s just got ideas flowing from all over the place.

He came with no instruction, he didn’t say, ‘This is the theme’ or ‘I want it like this.’ He just wanted my music. And at that time it felt like somebody that I had a lot of respect for had put a lot of trust in me.”

Pierce says that trust gave him room for his muse to visit.

“It just freed me up and put me in a place where I could focus on just the sounds, and those sounds started to affect the [Spiritualized] record,” he says, “and they put those songs into something contemporary to my life again. And I think the space they fit in now is quite affecting.”

Spiritualized
Tonight, 7:30
The Roxy (Relocated from the Wilbur Theatre)
279 Tremont St., Boston
MBTA: Green Line to Boylston
$25, 617-931-2000
www.ticketmaster.com