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Album Details

• Artist: Hawkwind
• Album: Palace Springs
• Label: GWR
• Year of Release: 1991
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: gwhill on 2013-03-18

Coming from a band with seemingly a million albums under their belt, this is really one of their best live discs. It captures a great, if quite short, period of the band and does so with a style and texture that really is incredible. The lineup on this set is Bridget Wishart (vocals), Dave Brock (guitar, keyboards, vocals), Harvey Bainbridge (keyboards and vocals), Alan Davey (bass guitar and vocals), Simon House (violin), Richard Chadwick (drums). The music here was recorded on the group’s first US tour since the 1970s. I was fortunate enough to catch the band on the tour, and I have to say that this live recording is an excellent record of the event.

The opener is “Back In the Box.” Staccato in its textures, this Hawk cut features some stellar vocal work from Bridget Wishhart and a great violin texture that seriously adds to the piece. It includes a great weird interlude. A more straightforward rock song, “Treadmill” is made stronger by the violin presence. It has a great instrumental break with lots of killer hawk jamming. Very lush and dramatic, (although listed as two separate pieces) the next two cuts (“Void of Golden Light”/”Lives of Great Men”) really run together alternating in and out of them. They are combined to create one of the finest excursions into the musical universe of Hawkwind ever.  

The next short piece (although listed as “Time We Left,” it’s more a piece of the song than a full performance) does a great job of capturing the early Hawkwind sound and this is one of the better renditions of this piece ever recorded.  Based on a slow keyboard dominated weird groove, “Heads” is quite strong. Set in very spacey weirdness, “Acid Test” is rather strange. Coming straight out of the previous cut, keyboards bring “Damnation Alley” in and the number begins to build from there. It includes a nice sedate segment.

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