The Future Never Waits

Album review

Dave Brock, Hawkwind's only founding member, was 81 when he recorded this album and shows no sign of slowing down. Since emerging from the pandemic with 2021's Somnia, the band -- Brock on guitar, synth, and vocals; Doug MacKinnon on bass; Richard Chadwick on drums and vocals, and Magnus Martin on keyboards -- have worked constantly. In late 2021, they recruited Tim "Thighpaulsandra" Lewis to join them on tour and he remains with the studio group.
There's something very unusual about the title-track opener of The Future Never Waits, Hawkwind's 35th album. It commences not with the usual foreboding, distorted, paranoid throb, but with a breathing groove and a spacy pulse that, at over ten minutes, winds through many of the band's sonic trademarks in a drift with largely static dynamics. In its own way, it's a self-contained musical universe, constantly pointing outward only to pull back in on itself with every pass. "The End" abruptly segues in. It's more recognizable as Brock's dirty, machine-gun guitar riff sets the tone -- sounding like South London in 1977 -- joined by bass, drums, and synth to erect a nearly straight-ahead pop-punk hook that circles hypnotically in the coda. "They Are So Easily Distracted" is another ten-minute adventure. Introduced by a syncopated drum kit, it offers wafting synth and etheric spoken voices before an acoustic piano vamp frames a warmly seductive tenor saxophone solo. Electric piano is layered atop the sax, and the tune finds its way to full group interplay." The single "Rama (The Prophecy)" is classic Hawkwind. It uses Chadwick's drums as the engine to relentlessly drive Brock's guitar and vocal assault as electronics, percussion, and effects serve to center the primary instruments. Instrumental "USB1" is seemingly painted by electric piano, organ, synth, guitars, and limpid drums. Its trance-like drift and groove very gradually introduce a deeply bluesy guitar solo from Brock. "Outside of Time" also reflects the mercurial depths of vintage Hawkwind. Its murky production places the entire ensemble at the same dynamic level for a simple vamp in 4/4 time, covered by effects, reverb, drifting Mellotrons, pianos, and synths around Thighpaulsandra's soloing organ, making for a space age love song. "I'm Learning to Live Today" follows and is one of those pregnant Hawkwind jams that begins seemingly in the middle, a fully developed distorted guitar and bass vamp commiserate with roiling intensity above a swinging drum kit and Brock's vocal. Here it recalls Robert Wyatt's as the band builds a psychedelic space ritual around him. Other than the throwaway "Aldous Huxley," "The Beginning" is anolher disappointment. It wastes the first half fooling with electronic wankery and noise before transforming into a pillowy, midtempo psych ballad. Thankfully, the breezy, sunny electro-acoustic rocker "Trapped in this Modern Age" closes the album, balancing it out. More consistent than 2021's Somnia and 2019's All Aboard the Skylark, The Future Never Waits is, at once, more exciting and musically adventurous -- even with the (minor) missteps. This is a significant late-career highlight from Hawkwind.

© Thom Jurek /TiVo