Well this isn’t what I was expecting (which of course is never a bad thing), before spinning the disc I did my usual thing of checking the sleeve out, reading lyrics, etc, to get a general feel of what an album may sound like. Added to this the fact that I knew that vocalist Bridget Wishart is an ex-member of Hawkwind. So can I just say from the start that anyone looking for a cosmic voyage to the nether regions of space had better prepare themselves for a different kind of trip.
Lee Potts and John Pierpoint provide “everything but the vocals;” that ‘everything’ appears to be a large amount of synths with some guitar work which change in tone to sounding at points like Gary Numan’s later works as on “These are my Thoughts” to more traditional (dare I say it ‘space’) rock on “Snapshot.”
The album opens with “Truth and Lies” that starts like a sad lamenting lullaby before its tempo begins to pick up speed with a power chord chorus. It has curious mixture of melancholy and childish joyfulness that brings to mind Blast the Human Flower-era Danielle Dax. Bridget’s vocals on the whole album shift between soft half whispered statements, to soaring crystal-clear emotional highs. “Don’t Want to be Here” is a kind of ballad, all Vangelis-sounding piano and synth arrangements that drift away into almost nothing by the end. “Night Twist” adds an Oriental world music feel to the mix before its chill out trance rhythms take over. “Hen,” a paean to the battery chicken, is an eerie mixture of almost nursery rhyme chords that hit into Travelogue-era Human League beats to give it a disquieting effect. It’s interesting also to note here that some of Bridget’s lyrics on the album were written as far back as 1984: maybe the album title is a reference to that.
“Le Chapeau Rouge” is full to the brim of ambient keyboards that conjure up Exit-style Tangerine Dream while acoustic guitars fill in the melody. “You Don’t Talk Like a Human” is an awkward judder of a song that seems to sit uncomfortably with itself and serves as a strange preamble to the next track. “Snapshot” is nineteen minutes of modern kraut/space rock, and apart from it being the longest track on the album it is definitely, for me, one of its highlights. Bridget’s vocals shine and the music begins to head off outside of the ozone layer. There’s even some analogue synth-sounding wibble and big guitar solos that head towards the final squelching keyboard fade out – fantastic stuff.
Time Flies is an odd hybrid-sounding album that manages to use several differing musical styles and feels and makes them its own. It has an overall cohesive sound that permeates the record and doesn’t make it jar when it shifts sonically. It will be interesting to see where, musically, the band head next.
-Gary Parsons-
