Last year’s Genesis doc may have ignored Steve Hackett’s solo career altogether, but he remains more prolific than any of his old bandmates. Wolflight, his eighth album in as many years, is arguably his most ambitious to date.
It’s a record with a broad cultural remit, Hackett examining notions of history through an ancestral prism that takes in Greek mythology, the African Sahara, civil rights-era USA and his own beginnings in post-war Battersea.
The music is exploratory too, the folk-classical shadings of the epic title track serving as a wonderful conduit for his exquisite guitar playing – delicate one moment, prog-heavy the next. Love Song To A Vampire is Wolflight’s other great statement piece, veering from orchestral grandeur to feral electric rock.
Attention to detail is key. The nimble acoustics of Loving Sea evoke the heyday of CSN, while Corycian Fire is marked by end-of-days harmonies of which Carl Orff would’ve been proud./o:p
