ALL ABOARD THE SKYLARK

Hawkwind has been with us 50 years! To celebrate this, they released two new albums, this new studio album and "Acoustic Daze", that has acoustic versions from their old songs. I think it´s a pity the very organic sounding direction of "Into the Woods" didn´t continue in this new album. Instead the album is mostly that modern spacey sounding production that has been in Hawkwind albums from the mid eighties. All the musicians have been in the earlier Hawkwind albums, the newest member is saxplayer Michal Sosna, who has earlier been only "At the Roundhouse"-album.

The album starter "Flesh Fondue" is quite typical Hawkwind album starter with it´s "Leviation"-tempo. In the end there are some space effects and next "Nets of Space" is instrumental continuation of it. "Last Man On Earth" is the best song of the album and differs a lot from the other material. It´s much more acoustic and have clear sounds and great melodies, also I really like Magnus Martins vocals in it. The rest of the album is quite much that modern spacey sounding where the album started. "We Are Not Dead...Only Sleeping" is slow ok piece. The title piece is quite mediocre instrumental. In "65 Million Years Ago" goes a little better direction, when the song changes more powerful in the middle of it. "In the Beginning" is spacey synth instrumental. "The Road To..." is again quite mediocre instrumental, reminds me backmusic of some game. The ending "the Fantasy of Faldum" is another highlight of this album, again sung by Martin. It starts and ends acoustic, but has an electric middle part.

To me it seems the real reason of releasing this album has been their celebration year. They have now released one album in a year from the 2016, I hope they now go back to their earlier release pace, because they seem not have great ideas to fill the whole album when releasing album a year. One reason for my disappointment to this album can be the reason that some old stars have made really good albums this year (for example Jukka Gustavson, P J Harvey, Pere Ubu, Meat Puppets, Royal Trux, Springsteen). On the other hand this hasn´t been a good year to old prog artists (except Jukka), so I little bit wonder what the future of prog will be? Anyway I think there is still hope Hawkwind will make great albums, those two different pieces in this new album give me hope they will go next more into that direction. I can give this only two stars, because I think this album is only for the fans.

Alright but not exceptional Hawkwind album, marking the band's 50th year in flight. Enjoyable, but also fairly forgettable - the more organic, less electronics-drenched approach of Into the Woods has faded back, the acoustic experiment of Road To Utopia has been left behind and overall I would not be shocked to eventually learn that these compositions, performed by a somewhat stripped-down lineup, consist of off-cuts from the run of albums from Blood of the Earth onwards. It's far from bad, but it's not exceptional; call it three and a quarter stars, rounded up to three and a half if you're a big fan of Dave Brock and company.