Hawkwind - Road to Utopia
The weather has cooled off enough to use my big stereo just in time to listen to a brand new Hawkwind album on it first.
While I read Hawkwind’s initial posting about it a couple of months ago, and new it was going to be a mostly acoustic album, the sound of it still caught me by surprise once I put it on.
It’s a rehashing, mostly acoustic of a number of their songs spanning almost five decades. What I didn’t expect were the horn and string arrangements, like a full-blown, light pop music album. I don’t mean horns like Nik Turner’s “asthmatic water fowl” style of saxophone, but total pop music horns.
The two instrumental songs, Hymn to the Sun and Intro The Night are both pretty boring, and thankfully short.
The song, The Flying Doctor sounds like a far more rollicking tale in this version, with the vocals a lot clearer in more muddy, electric ones. It’s a lot easier to hear the story of the drug addicted doctor.
My favorite on this album, the one that sounds the most like you’d expect from Hawkwind, is The Watcher with Eric Clapton playing electric guitar.
Overall, I like it. But I have to wonder, would I enjoy this music if it was some other group and not Hawkwind. I’m not so sure. Maybe only because I thought they were playing Hawkwind songs.
