The Perfect Prescription Spacemen 3 Glass; 1 987
originally published April 25, 2011 on Probably Just Hungry
If the tides of time leave only one thing that Spacemen 3 are known for, it will be their famously self-reflexive motto: ”Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to.” And even if the core message of the statement is a bit nihilistic or romanticized, it’s still one of the most beautifully articulated statements in modern music. Because: The Perfect Prescription is, at its heart, a testament to the wastelands of the human condition. Space rock. At that core is a twisted message of spirituality, self destruction, introspection, and self-absorbed analysis. This record taps into that jumbled and confused mess in the classical methods: studio effects, otherworldly lyrics, and psychedelic album art. What sets them apart, though, is their stance on the whole of it. Where other bands have preached endlessly about the necessity of ”getting in touch with your spirituality” in any number of different ways. A comparable amount have testified of the role of drugs in that same spirituality. But Spacemen 3 just don’t seem to give a fuck. In fact, you can look right into their faces and tell right away that they’re not hippie shamans or mystic bible thumpers. The album art might be swirling around in high-contrast heaven, but pasted right on top of it lies the band’s two core members, disrupting the maelstrom. They’re posing rather ironically with clean-cut looks and brandishing their instruments like ’60s-style major label poster boys. But if you look into their eyes and their blank expressions, you can really get the feel that they really really don’t care. "Take Me To The Other Side" Which brings us to the album’s crashing opener ”Take Me To The Other Side”. This track has all the smash and bang of a Baptist sermon and a healthy amount of the language for it too. Lead Spaceman Jason Pierce sings almost in spiritual mantra about taking people by the hand and leading them to the ”other side” - it doesn’t take very long to draw the comparisons between a
religious experience and a drug-induced fugue. "Call the Doctor" And as an opposite bookend, ”Call the Doctor” mimics the dying words of a junkie in a tough place. The instrumentation is still the same, with synth drones and minimal melody chugging along. What’s weird is that nothing is preachy or exceptionally biased about this or the previous track - it plays out more like theatrical performance, letting you decide what you want about the narrator placing his drugs up on a high pedestal. What we get at the end of the album is a confusing portrait - of drug culture, in a fair depic- tion of the highs and lows, by a seemingly disinterested third party. Nothing adds up. What’s left are the fleeting moments of self-reflection and the ruins of romanticized notions. And that’s how the genre moved forward. Space rock: playing your heart out in a vacuum of reverb, drugs, and irony.