With playing assists from Jason as well as the Jazz Butcher and members of the Perfect Disaster, Sonic stays inside the one-chord amelodic vamps of Spacemen country, tightening the stylistic bond to Suicide by covering the duo’s “Rock’n’Roll (Is Killing My Life).” But the album has a serious lack of vitality. With S3 nearing collapse (Jason Pierce launched his own band, Spiritualized, in mid-1990, with an enjoyably grandiose rendition of Chip Taylor’s “Anyway That You Want Me,” a ’66 hit for the Troggs), Sonic Boom (Peter Kember on the first Spacemen LP he was billed as Peter Gunn) made Spectrum, an album more noteworthy for its ambitious adjustable (first presssing only) op-art sleeve than its content. (The Glass and Genius cassettes add 40 minutes of bonus material, including an endless version of “Rollercoaster” and a lengthy reworking of “Starship,” a Sun Ra adaptation from the first MC5 album the Genius CD adds only those two tracks the Fire CD skips that stuff and instead adds a pair of B-sides from the “Take Me to the Other Side” single.) Transparent Radiation contains two different renditions of the title track, a distended version of the album’s placid “Ecstasy Symphony,” “Starship” and one other item to counter the band’s tender tendencies. Although things heat up towards the end, much of the album - like its quietly contemplative string- driven centerpiece, a cover of Red Crayola’s “Transparent Radiation” - is pretty and evocative, but hardly engrossing.
The Perfect Prescription finds Jason Pierce (guitar, organ, vocals), Sonic Boom (guitar, organ, vocals) and Pete Bassman (bass) abruptly reducing the dosage with lots of sonic space, varied instrumentation (acoustic guitar, violins, horns, keyboards) and very little percussion.
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