When Hawkwind recorded Stories From Time And Space last spring, the songwriting process yielded nearly 40 minutes of leftover material that just needed arranging – making There Is No Space For Us a sister album of sorts.
Since 2019’s All Aboard The Skylark, the group have sounded rejuvenated; and the new record is another instalment rich in immersive sonic detail, with considerable power and momentum allied to a vivid, panoramic sound.
The opener There Is Still Danger begins with Tim ‘Thighpaulsandra’ Lewis and Magnus Martin’s dancing sequencers and upward arcing synths. Dave Brock enters like an Old Testament prophet delivering judgement on our collective folly: ‘There was a moment in the past/When we could have changed our lives at last,’ he intones, prompting the band to launch into an urgent two-chord riff.
The album extends Hawkwind’s recent tack of mixing familiar elements with some stylistic surprises. Synth pulses act as a springboard for Richard Chadwick’s syncopated snare patterns on the instrumental Space Continues, with Brock’s guitar characteristically weaving in and out of the chord sequence, then a horn section emerges from out of the cosmic whoosh before it culminates in a mosaic of echoed keyboards.
Brock has addressed his mortality in recent songs… maybe there’s a feeling of resignation in his voice
The Co-Pilot starts with three minutes of a near-Latin groove and tuned percussion lines, before taking off with a tried-and-tested four-chord riff with added heavenly vocal chorales.
Elsewhere, Changes is a not-so-distant cousin of Doremi Fasol Latido’s Down Through The Night. Over its nine-minute course Doug MacKinnon introduces a monster riff, his bass roaming like Lemmy’s on Born To Go, while Lewis’ flamboyant synth solo gives an added dimension.
On 1971’s We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago, Brock reflected on how we’d strayed onto a path that led to environmental catastrophe. Here, on the similarly acoustic title track, it sounds like he’s run out of patience; in an apocalyptic mood he sings of ‘devastation of our land... Is this the epitaph of man?’ And with the human race gone, he adds, life on Earth will be rebooted in ‘a new creation,’ as the full band bring it to an uneasy conclusion.
The finale is the bittersweet, melodic A Long Way From Home, its sole lyric being Brock singing the title line at its close. He’s 83 in Earth years now, and he’s addressed his mortality in recent songs, so maybe that’s a feeling of resignation in his voice.
But if his implication is that he must travel further to find peace and resolution, then Hawkwind – his metaphorical means of transportation – are in as good a shape as ever.
There Is No Space For Us is on sale now via Cherry Red.
