This new album from hovercraft is more than it seems, the best of both worlds perhaps, a late-blooming musical fruition, 30 years in the making. When demos of the band were recently unearthed (i.e., a lid was lifted off a long-forgotten shoebox), the surviving members of the band realised what they had before them were the only surviving remnants of the now elusive Charlie “Pepper” Wildman’s songwriting. Hurrah! But the cassettes, having weathered three decades of wear and tear, were not in the best of shape. Boo!
Blown Away is the result of those ragged recordings and degraded demos being made fit for purpose via the advantages of modern studio technology and AI’s digital dexterity. An album with its roots in earlier times, polished and pumped up for the benefit of a whole new audience. But not too polished.
And what you find here is a selection of songs that don’t belong here or there, raw, power-pop groove meets indie cool meets punky energy, songs that should have been hits in any era of modern music. And that isn’t me just blowing smoke; these are great songs.
“Superman” is built of shimmering shards of guitars and razor-wire riffs, energy, and groove. But, as great as that is, and it is, it is the lyrics that are, like all of the songs found here, the icing on the cake. Real-life thoughts and feelings, events, and experiences are rendered in the oblique and metaphorical. The mythologies of the street, operas being played out in back alleys. Poetic, mystical, and marvellous.
And “Pass The Night Nurse,” a brooding, beligerent indie charge powered on by banks of soulful horns and pop accessibility, should have been massive, a tune now being great as one of those anthems of the golden age of indie, had the dice fallen the right way. It may still be. If “Killer Blues” sounded like this back in the day, it was ahead of its time, a contagious blend of moody blues and dancefloor moves, atmosphere, and attitude. “To The Grave” reminds me of Mazzy Star at their most stripped back…and that is not a reference I throw around lightly!
Blown Away is a collection of songs that never got their day in the sun. They may have been ahead of the curve; just as likely is that the powers that be never picked up on just how great the songs were. Perhaps their day has now come! I sure hope so.
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