I’m always amazed at the crazy releases record stores somehow are able to procure, and every now and then I find myself purchasing them just because of the rareness factor. Now this has proved disastrous on occasion (apparently Best Coast was also the name of a late 90s punk group), but this time when I caught a glipse of a limited edition EP from Spiritualized, one of my favorites British bands, I knew I had a winner.

Information about the recording is scant at best, with most of the stuff I was able to find coming from the Spiritualized website (even the label they recorded it for has been absorbed by Universal since the 2003 release, with their website evaporating into thin air). Basically, a month before they released their 2003 full-length Amazing Grace the group decided to split up the tracks on the LP into three highly limited EPs. The one I found was the first installment in the threesome, uncreatively titled Amazing Grace EP (1 of 3), featuring none other than frontman J. Spaceman on the cover.

If you are an avid Spiritualized fan, then the music on the EP isn’t anything new. Although not in the exact order you would find on the LP, the featured tracks “Cheapster”, “Hold On”, “Never Goin’ Back”, and “The Powers and the Glory” are identical to what’s on the full-length. The only interesting thing to think about is why these songs were chosen to be lumped together.

Even though they were five years away from completing their trompe d’oeil with A&E, there are a surprising amount of similarities between Amazing Grace EP 1 and their future work — especially concerning the structure of the album. One thing I noted in my description of A&E on my Top Albums of 2008 list (#2) was how it was essentially a triptych with the three parts being instrumental / alt. country / rock & roll. Even though there are only four songs on the EP, it follows in the same pattern. The first track on both the A & B sides (“Cheapster” and “Never Goin’ Back”) are classic rock anthems that are certainly stadium-ready. After the noisy one-minute intro, “Hold On” slips into country/folk acoustic ballad territory while “The Power and the Glory” is an instrumental jamfest — and voilà the tri-force is complete.

So, yeah, kind of cool stuff, especially if you are Spiritualized fan like myself. In an effort to convert the non-fans, check out two tracks off of Amazing Grace below:

Spiritualized // Hold On

Spiritualized // Cheapster