Clearly, it would be folly to expect any major deviation from the time-honoured norm with Hawkwind’s first new-album release in five years. The co-ordinates were set in 1969, and the band have been unstintingly, inexorably heading for wherever-it-is ever since.
Maybe that’s the whole point: they’re like a perpetual motion machine, and their albums are little windows which allow one to peer in at any point to ensure that they’re still stoically hammering away, en route to a transcendent star cluster at the far end of eternity. Fatigue inevitably sets in because one can and will spend aeons waiting for something to happen over and above the default setting of unexceptional chord patterns, swooshing solar winds and electronic jizzing. Seahawks and Inner Visions, for example, are content to rely upon lazy semitonal see-sawing for the most part in lieu of a proper riff.
Perseverance is eventually rewarded with the uncommonly resolute Sweet Obsession, which is a blustery and tuneful neopsych treat, apart from the occasional Nena-style synth blare. Likewise, the thoroughly committed You’d Better Believe It sounds as though it’s hotwired directly into the band’s Ladbroke Grove counterculture source, with a melody which joyously resembles Murray Head’s 1967 single She Was Perfection.
