VA - Hawkwind, Friends & Relations: Rarities (2022)

An intriguing addition to the Friends & Relations series, The Rarities is, in fact, an assemblage drawn more or less equally from the original album releases, plus a vault full of further material that never made it onto the LPs themselves. This includes additional material by the unrelated (but certainly not uninfluenced) Underground Zero alongside guitarist Huw Lloyd Langton's eponymous solo band, Michael Moorcock's intriguing "Brothel in Rosenstrasse," and Inner City Unit's statement of intent, "I.C.U." Included, too, are several of the numbers omitted from the earlier Best of Friends & Relations album, including Robert Calvert's "Work Song" and Nik Turner's "Phone Home Elliot" (but still no "Man With the Golden Arm") -- although a couple of songs duplicated from that set do suggest Rarities was not the most carefully compiled album in the Hawkwind back catalog. Ultimately, the usefulness of this album (as with all the other Friends & Relations discs) precisely depends on how deeply the listener needs to delve into the tangled world of Hawkwind. The mothership, after all, has sufficient avenues and alleyways in its own right. ~ Dave Thompson