New Album Stories From Time And Space By Hawkwind

So I come to Hawkwind with absolutely no baggage, which is how I'm spinning being completely ignorant of these musical giants. How I've managed to get to this age without hearing this band before I've no idea, but there you are.

I can see from Wikipedia that Hawkwind's only consistent member is Dave Brock, still making music at the age of 82. I think it's really important to avoid qualifiers to reviews like "...this is impressive for an 82 year old". The music stands or falls by itself. So I'm not going to be impressed by his age (although I am a bit).

I'm two songs in, and it's not what I expected. The sound is structurally straightforward but full of ideas and variation.  The second song, The Starship, is full of energy and even though it's basically two chords its groove manages to hold the attention for the nearly 8 minutes of the song. The singing is not to the forefront, clearly Dave's voice is, not suprisingly, not holding up particularly well. But that genuinely doesn't matter. I have to say I really like this.

Song 3, What Are We Going To Do While We're Here, starts with a great synth blippy bloppy build up with a deep soulful guitar over the top. I'm taking it to be an intro, but we're a minute and a half in and it hasn't broken out yet - maybe this is the whole thing? No, at around 2 minutes it turns into something else. And then again at 3 minutes. Spoken vocals over heavier guitars. It's strange, I wonder how it works, but it does.

I'm a bit of a convert to Hawkwind, I have to say. I find myself wondering if this album is anything like older Hawkwind. I'm going to have to find out I think. 35 studio albums. It's going to take me some time.

Reasons to listen:

  • You have ears
Reasons not to listen:
  • You're really put off by singing which hasn't been through pitch correction software and which sounds a bit, shall we say, 1970s
Interesting fact of the day: Hawkwind's line up now includes Thighpaulsandra, an experimental multi-instrumentalist who began his career working with the legendary neolithicist Julian Cope.

Comments

  1. Mark15 April 2024 at 07:27

    Quark Strangeness and Charm. Listen now!

    ReplyDelete

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