TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER

After years of silence on the studio album front, does Take Me To Your Leader break the curse Hawkwind had seemingly been under Distant Horizons (or, depending on how hardline you are, maybe the Xenon Codex, or Levitation, or Warrior On the Edge of Time) where they simply couldn't manage to make a studio album worthy of their illustrious name? Unfortunately not, as most listeners will realise when they note that the first song is merely a re-recording of an old Calvert era track which was perfectly good in its original incarnation. And the new compositions are just outright tedious. I really should give up and turn my attention to more recent studio outings by Hawkwind, since I hear that from Blood of the Earth onwards they've done a bang-up job of making their studio albums more consistent, but as far as the mid-2000s go their live albums from the era are far better than their studio efforts.