Steve Hackett: Wolflight

Ex-Genesis guitarist takes a walk on the wild side.

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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

Rob Hughes

Freelance writer for Classic Rock since 2008, and sister title Prog since its inception in 2009. Regular contributor to Uncut magazine for over 20 years. Other clients include Word magazine, Record Collector, The Guardian, Sunday Times, The Telegraph and When Saturday Comes. Alongside Marc Riley, co-presenter of long-running A-Z Of David Bowie podcast. Also appears twice a week on Riley’s BBC6 radio show, rifling through old copies of the NME and Melody Maker in the Parallel Universe slot. Designed Aston Villa’s kit during a previous life as a sportswear designer. Geezer Butler told him he loved the all-black away strip.