Hawkwind‘s succesful partnership with the Cherry Red label continues apace; The band have released an album a year, more or less, since joining the label a decade or so ago, and the latest in that line, There Is No Space For Us, continues the high quality run of releases they’ve produced for the label so far.

There’s a sense of heightened urgency about much of the material here – by the time the band finish their already-announced touring schedule in support of the album band founder and main man Dave Brock will be eighty four, after all – but that’s not to say that any of the music sounds rushed or forced.

Far from it, in fact; Best track on the album, Changes, sounds positively fresh and vital, bouncing along on a guitar motif that surprisingly carries more than a whiff of Van Halen about it. It’s just a whiff, of course; this is Hawkwind and as soon as Brock opens his mouth that’s what it sounds like, but it’s enough to start the salivatory process motoring as you realise this is a band that still has the odd surprise up it’s sleeve and isn’t afraid to stretch the template a little to use them. The quick blast of heavy metal riffage on the title track is also going to raise a smile amongst fans of the band’s oft-forgotten rockier mid eighties releases, if only for a few seconds, and there is a feeling sometimes that, despite Hawkwind’s permanent stance as one of rock’s most forward-looking units, Brock is remembering a few times past as well on TINSFU.

Normal service is offered with the excellent Co-Pilot and the space jazz of The Outer Region of the Universe, a reasuringly trippy, swirlingly hypnotic piece of Hawknoise, and it has to be said that the team Brock has had around him since 2021 (that’s longstanding drummer Richard Chadwick, guitar and keyboarder Magnus Martin, bassist Doug Mackinnon and keyboardist Thighpaulsandra) are the perfect lineup to take our hero to the end of the Hawkwind saga, if there indeed is to be an ‘end’ in the commonly accepted term of the word. As Brock himself says on the churning space punk of Neutron Star, the band are travellers of time and space, so why should there be an end?

Closing track A Long Way From Home is a gorgeous way to end; Mournful lead guitar opens over chiming acoustics, a crackly snare and lush backing vocals augmented by some nice melodic basswork from Mackinnon; Uplifting piano enters at the song’s midway point, and just as the listener is lulled into thinking that maybe they are listening to some spectral lift music, Brock appears to sign off with a poignant last word.

“And I, a long, long way from home”…

And then he’s gone, back away to the starways he’s inhabited this past half century or more, and forever to roam. Is that it, the final word? You wouldn’t bet on it, but equally you couldn’t blame Dave Brock for calling time now. And if this is the end, then There Is No Space For Us is a fine, fine, parting shot.

There Is No Space For Us releases on April 18th.