The season of Christmas concerts in churches is upon us, but few festive services will unfold like this. Eschewing his band's traditional feedback assault, Spiritualized main man Jason Pierce is tonight accompanied by a piano, string quartet and gospel trio for one of his occasional, low-key Acoustic Mainlines shows.

The ecclesiastical setting is entirely appropriate, as Spiritualized have always dealt in the language of the devotional. Diffident and reserved behind dark glasses, Pierce is nobody's idea of a hellfire preacher, but his intimate confessionals echo through the nave like a series of narcotic-tinged hymns for the flawed and the fallen. It has been four years since Spiritualized's last album, Amazing Grace, and Pierce visits that record only once, choosing instead to preview tracks from next year's completed follow-up, and range through his 20-year back catalogue. Two new songs, Amen and Going Down Slow, draw parallels between the plight of the drug addict and that of the religious martyr over hypnotic repeated riffs - sounds like the new album will be very much Spiritualized business as usual.

Pierce breathes soul and yearning into auteur-savant Daniel Johnston's True Love Will Find You in the End, but inevitably it is the material from 1997's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space that truly quickens the pulse, with the gospel trio lending a spectral poignancy to Broken Heart and the call-and-response routine of I Think I'm in Love. The morose Pierce finally cracks a wan smile before ending the evening by transforming Silent Night into a serene opiate daze and crooning through the gospel standard Oh Happy Day. It is a fittingly perverse reminder that even at their most muted, Spiritualized remain a resolutely life-affirming concern.