HW: Re: Hawkwind Onward

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Wed, 9 May 2012, SHLL (Scott Heller) wrote:
> I am really surprised that there has been no discussion of the new 
> Hawkwind record. I still don't have mine but some of you out there must 
> have it by now... What do people think compared to Blood of the Earth?? 
> Has anyone heard the vinyl? They did a terrible job on the mastering of 
> the vinyl on the last one, sound was very muddy (way too much low end) 
> compared to the CD sound. Hope they sort this one out. I have not bought 
> the vinyl yet as I don't listen to the last one on vinyl due to the 
> sound issues.
>
> Anyway, I really look forward to hearing it and digging into the 
> songs...

 	I actually only got hold of this album in the last couple of 
weeks, which is a bit poor for a fan I know. I'd been much encouraged by 
the two tracks I'd heard on Aural Innovations webcasts, and I now realise 
that in some ways those were the two tracks I was most likely to like 
(`Seasons' and the hidden track). But I've given it several spins now--I 
got the expanded edition--and have some opinions, if anyone wants 'em. 
Overall, though, my current verdict is that I actually like this album 
better than _Blood of the Earth_ but can't easily explain why since I 
think the production is unhelpfully dense and that there are fewer stand-
out tracks. It just seems like a coherent piece of work by a band that 
knew what it was after. That, also, seems strange when one looks at who 
was on the tracks and realises that, for example, Tim Blake's hardly there 
outside the tracks he wrote parts for, Dibs only gets two writing 
credits even though he seems omni-present and there's a sizeable part of 
the album which is all-or-mostly-Dave and which doesn't sound radically 
different to the rest even so. So my first impression was that this seems 
like a genuinely active and coherent band, and that looking as it to see 
whether or not this is `proper Hawkwind' or not is not going to be the 
right way to listen to it. It's obviously what the band called Hawkwind is 
doing now.

 	So, track-by-track? `Seasons' is to my ear mainly Dibs's work but 
Richard actually gets lead credit so what do I know? Intense, fast and 
hostile; the dense production actually an advantage here, and definitely a 
highlight that makes one eager to hear more.

`The Hills Have Ears'--a doomful Gaia-hypothesis prophecy on which Niall 
gets lead credit, in which case he should do that more often. The words 
aren't great but contain a Chrome reference, unexpected but pleasing. On 
the whole this is no drop in quality from the beginning.

`Mind Cut'--all Brock, words music and playing, and none too bad but 
neither is it stand-out among his work. We've kind of heard this before, 
and the words are rather basic. (I care about this more as I get older.)

`System Check'--a `Psychosis'-style spaceship radio exchange, in which 
Tim massively over-acts compared to the rest of the crew, bless him. 
Entertaining filler.

`Death Trap'--retread, obviously, but really quite good, up with the 
_Alien4_ version as a justifiable rework and identifiably, as I say, a 
different band; this is the point at which I came to the realisation about 
this line-up's coherence that I set out above.

`Southern Cross'--Tim's track, but it sounds like a Hawkwind one all the 
same, and better-than-entertaining instrumental filler.

`Prophecy'--Brock track with only him, Niall and Richard on the recording. 
Again lyrics not the strong point but reasonably mantric, which forgives 
that a bit; all the same this isn't a high point.

`Electric Tears'/`Drive By'--technically two tracks but I can't detect the 
separation between them without watching the CD player's display, despite 
the fact that the line-ups differ, first being just date and the latter 
being the trio from `Prophecy' again. The bit I think of as `Drive By' is 
a bit like `Taxi for Max' would have been if they'd stopped and completely 
rethought how to do something fun in that general frame. There's more 
thought generally in this pair than most of Hawkwind's synth interludes 
but they're very short.

`Computer Cowards'--just Dave and Richard, and the lyrics uniquely not 
given in the sleeve. They're not hard to figure out: Dave doesn't like 
people sniping on the Internet and wishes them an evil fate. Hi Dave! It's 
in the vein of `Behind the Face' from _Spacebrock_ or `Comfy Chair' but 
darker, meaner and more musically repetitive, not that I mean that in a 
bad way. This is Dave's dark side coming out!

`Howling Moon'--Brock solo and I've not really anything major to say about 
it. Probably the least impressive piece of music on the discs.

`Right to Decide'--a bonus track, and well, yes, it's about the same as 
ever it was but with the sound of this new line-up, except in as much as 
it's the 2008 line-up with Jason Stuart also aboard. I quite liked Jason 
live but here the plinkety piano adds something dangerously like Rockney 
to the feel of things, something I think only `Brainbox Pollution' really 
copes with in the Hawkwind catalogue. Still a good song but rightly 
relegated to bonus-ville here.

`Aerospaceage Inferno'--another bonus with that same line-up, and here 
again I don't find the piano much of a bonus. The lyrics are printed here, 
for some reason, whereas none of the other songs from before get this 
privilege; there's also a middle-eight poem from Dibs, or at least he 
recites it and it has his general flavour, about a bad re-entry by a 
spacecraft, which reads quite lamely on the page but which works very well 
in the setting of the bigger track, and definitely adds something. It's a 
good version but still, plinkety-plink, I can't look back on that as a 
good idea however good Jason was at it.

`The Flowering of the Rose'--instrumental jam by the 2008 line-up again, 
and this one quite fun, think `Flight to Maputo' or `Going to Hawaii' or 
`Only Time Will Tell' but with a bit more going on that's melodic. I'm 
glad to have got this in the package.

`Trans Air Trucking'--a Brock-Blake joint effort, with only them playing, 
Tim on bass as well as keys, and instrumental. I was hoping for a bit more 
life and bounce from it given the title, I'd kind of like to see the title 
taken off it and saved for something else as there isn't so much going on 
here. Pleasant enough!

`Deep Vents'--Brock solo piece, but weirdly like one of Alan's pieces from 
the early nineties. Could have done with being longer! I like these noises 
and would cheerfully have had more of them.

`Green Finned Demon'--the Brock-Hone-Chadwick trio here and a perfectly 
good version, but it's hard to say it really adds anything to the song 
that we didn't have in other versions. By the end of this album it's hard 
not to think that they powered it out so quickly that they couldn't come 
up with enough conventional songs so resorted to retreads to space out the 
synth work and poems.

And then there's the hidden track, whose name I would like to know because 
it's really quite good, lyrics not unlike `Blood of the Earth' and 
ploughing the same kind of high-octane apocalypticism as `Seasons' at the 
beginning. I suspect Dibs and Niall of being to the fore on this one, and 
in general I don't understand why this one's a secret, it should be a 
matter for pride. Excellent closer.

 	So, there's some filler I think and I question the need for two 
retreads (in fact I question the need for one but the `Death Trap' is so 
good I will forgive it) but I'm very happy to have them still active and 
*sounding like a band*. If they turned out another of this standard in 
eighteen months that would be a cause for celebration I reckon. So, there 
you go Scott, some thoughts :-) Yours all,
 					   Jon

-- 
   Jonathan Jarrett       "There is scarce any tradition or popular error
Medievalist historian    but stands also delivered by some good author."
        Oxford           (Sir Thomas Browne, "Pseudodoxia Epidemica", 1646)