(HW) BOTE (my review)

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Mon, 2 Aug 2010, mike coleman wrote:
> After several listens so far (embarrassing I'm no longer in the front lines
> getting stuff), here's my take-
> PRETTY BLOODY GREAT
> If I were to point at something negative for me, it would be that the
> percussion is too busy on "Sweet Obsession"
> In opposition to some commentators I've seen, I LOVE the inclusion of "You
> Better Believe It", I think it is superb, and I am very used to being drawn
> back to earlier material and I liked being reconnected here, and I like the
> way it goes straight into some ambient freak-out...
> to me, the highlight of the album is Prometheus.....AWESOME!@!!
> Unfortunately Starshine is also fantastic so if your format lacks it you are
> handicapped.
> the end
> another wonderful piece of Hawk clothing for my soul.

 	It took me bloody ages to get hold of this, not least because I 
left it a bit late on the 2CD version and the first few places on Amazon 
that had it turned out not to... Same old, same old. But I did get it, and 
then with some reluctance also the single CD version to make sure I had 
`Starshine', and so I can now say something about what I think of the 
album. (I realise that there's another bonus track on the vinyl, but, eh, 
not quite Kollectory enough, sorry.)

 	Firstly, as regards the main album I have to agree with everyone 
who's said that all the rock action here is coming from Dibs. I'm not 
going to count `You'd Better Believe It' or even `Sweet Obsession' because 
they're reworks, which I wish the band would stop doing--I can't believe 
they were short of material and neither of these are improvements of the 
original to my ears. Nothing wrong with them, but they are substantially 
filler because I don't find anything in them to keep me tuned in. (Neither 
were my favourite songs in the first place, I should say, I will sometimes 
skip YBBI on HotMG in any case. I don't like the middle space where 
Hawkwind tried to give its blanga tunes.) The Dibs tracks are not just 
Spacehead leftovers, that's for sure, though the style is unmistakably 
similar; they might count as Krel leftovers but that would be a different 
thing. I think I agree with Mike above that `Prometheus' is the stand-out 
(and least like Dibs's normal output) but I think that `Sentinel' would 
have been if it came earlier in the album; by the time we reach it we've 
already had `Wraith', which is ploughing the same sort of mood albeit 
faster, and it seems as if `Sentinel' is just more of the same, whereas I 
think it's actually one of Dib's finer moments, emotional but bleak and 
quite complex to figure out. I loved this live and I still like it here.

 	As to the others, well, I can't get very excited about any of 
Niall's material I'm afraid. Tim's `Inner Visions' is the real stuff, but 
is it real Blake or real HW? Is there a difference at the moment? Tim's 
hands are all over this album, and that's no bad thing in as much as the 
production is markedly better than on TMTYL, less bedroomy and more roomy 
if you see what I mean.

 	The most distinctive piece all round, I think, is `Comfy Chair', 
which is actually proof that Dave still has a peculiar kind of 
genius--it's musically enveloping, almost claustrophobically dense and the 
sense moves through the lines so slowly that your heartrate probably 
halves while listening to it--but it's not rubbish, however sentimental it 
may be, and neither is it simple or dull. It also definitely sounds as if 
it belongs on the album, at the opposite end from the melodrama of 
`Prometheus' and `Inner Visions'. (The two reworks *don't* sound like they 
belong here, precisely because they were created by different bands; this 
band has its own chemistry and cooperation going on that would not have 
generated these songs. Hidden in there, I suppose, is a compliment about 
how fresh and current this album sounds, however we may or may not like 
its songs.)

 	Between the two styles, for those that have it, is `Starshine', 
which is largely jammed as far as I can tell and functions as a kind of 
extended outtro to the album. It *is* very nice, able and not dull, but 
doesn't have a lot of meaningful content to it and was I think rightly 
relegated to bonus trackdom, where it does the job well.; the version of 
the album without it seems to end rather abruptly by comparison.

 	So, in short, my hopes for the future out of this album: let Tim 
stay involved in the production, everything will sound more professional 
as a result; let Dibs write all the Krel-like songs he can, the band needs 
more new ROCK and he appears to be where it's coming from; I wouldn't be 
completely sorry to see Richard a bit further forward in the song-writing 
again, if we must have would-be-dance like `Sweet Obsession' at least it 
can be new and entertaining like `Angela Android'; and my challenge to 
Niall Hone would be, make it clear what you sound like on the next album, 
because this one leaves me with very little idea. It does seem quite 
likely that there will *be* a next album, though, and in that I guess he 
has his share of credit.

 	The live mini-album that is the bonus disc on the 2CD set, 
meanwhile, is storming and very much worth having, not least because of 
the blistering Motorhead-paced cover of Syd Barrett's `Long Gone', 
completely unexpected and extremely impressive. This, I assume, is what 
Niall's input sounds like in which case, let's have more of it, or was it 
Dibs? Either way. `Wraith' sounds better live--typical Hawkwind to release 
a version of a new studio song that surpasses the stduio recording almost 
straight away--and all the other songs there fit well into the current 
sound and are not dithered over. The closing self-interview is *almost* 
unlistenably incoherent but does make it very clear that this band, as a 
bunch of people condemned to spend a lot of time together, works, which 
has not always been the case I guess, and just for that is nice to have.

 	That's my however-many-pennyworth, anyhow, yours all,
 							      Jon

-- 
       Jonathan Jarrett, Oxford       jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
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