This is an incredible thirtieth solo album release from Steve Hackett, and quite a release it is too. Managing to combine a myriad of disparate styles and atmospheres into a coherent and intelligent whole, it draws on Steve’s own experiences as it tells a semi-autobiographical rite-of-passage tale centred on a young character named Travla. The concept requires an array of approaches to bring it to fruition and Steve is able to switch masterfully between sound collage, heavy rockers, the blues, pseudo-classical, balladry, prog rock and acoustic guitar led pieces that allow the tale to be colourful and ever shifting. Steve reflects on the release; “I love this album. It says the things I’ve been wanting to say for a very long time.”
The Circus And The Nightwhale is actually Steve’s first new music in over two years. It follows the excellent acoustic album Under A Mediterranean Sky from January 2021, which was very commercially successful, rising to number two in the UK Classical chart, and, in September of the same year, Surrender Of Silence, which again hit the UK Top 40. There was further success with the latest of Steve’s live releases Foxtrot At 50 + Hackett Highlights: Live in Brighton, which reached number two in the Rock & Metal Chart.
Steve and his band have been extremely busy playing live in recent years and this album necessarily had to be recorded between tours in 2022 and 2023 at Siren studio in the UK – with guest parts beamed in from Sweden, Austria, the US, Azerbaijan and Denmark. The line-up for The Circus And The Nightwhale includes some familiar faces alongside Steve on electric and acoustic guitars, 12-string, mandolin, harmonica, percussion, bass and vocals. Roger King on keyboards, programming and orchestral arrangements, Rob Townsend plays sax, Jonas Reingold the bass, Nad Sylvan provides vocals, with Craig Blundell performing on drums and Amanda Lehmann on vocals. Nick D’Virgilio and Hugo Degenhardt return as guests on the drum stool, whilst highly gifted engineer Benedict Fenner appears on keyboards and Malik Mansurov is back with the tar. Finally, Steve’s brother John Hackett is present once more on flute.
All the songs were written by Steve, along with his wife, the writer Jo Hackett, on tracks 1,3,5,6 and 12 and also with Roger King on 1, 5, 6, 8, 10 and 11.
The Circus And The Nightwhale starts in 1950s post-war London, reflecting the time that Steve grew up in Battersea, with the iconic Power Station in view from his family home. People Of The Smoke evokes that dirty, smoggy time and a city still traumatised by World War Two. The track features a sound collage of industry, society and media, created by Steve and Roger, along with a passage of string orchestra that is soon joined by cutting guitar, Nick on drums, Jonas on bass and Amanda on vocals, as characters come in and out of the story.
The next track is an instrumental piece, Passing Clouds, influenced by the Latin jazz soundtrack to Black Orpheus and French film composer Michel Legrand, which segues into the bluesy Taking You Down, which is about a kid Steve used to know who was a card shark at nine years old, and a pyromaniac who taught Steve to smoke. Nad is on vocals and Craig on drums for this track that shows Travla growing up in dubious company, until the discovery of music, particularly the guitar, which enables Travla’s life to change.
Found And Lost is very much about first love, and first liaisons. It’s spooky and slow, with Steve supplying some ethereal harmonica sounds. Soon, though, Travla is in a waltzy, proggy world of fairgrounds, vaudeville and spectacle for Enter The Ring. With the use of 12-string guitar, harpsichord, with John Hackett on flute and Amanda’s vocal, the song is redolent of Genesis. Steve describes it as; “a lovely combination of then and now.”
Travla’s personal life, and success with music are enmeshed in Get Me Out as he is aware that he’s being controlled by power and demons. Steve likens the slow 6/8 track to the theme from 50s legal drama Perry Mason, “It’s rock noir” he says. “I’m playing much too fast and angrily, sorry about that!”
The mood changes again with two love songs, Ghost Moon and Living Love, inspired by melodies that Steve had dreamed of. For Living Love, Steve effectively injects emotional vibrato into his voice against harmony guitar work.
With Circo Inferno Travla is trapped in a chaotic scene, the infernal circus. Fast and urgent, Malik’s tar is most energetic. Travla needs to escape, and Breakout is that opportunity, featuring Hugo on drums and Steve on bass guitar as he is on Circo. “I’m a very unsubtle bass player,” Steve laughs. “Don’t ever hire me for that.” Meanwhile, Hugo Degenhardt unleashes his energy and drive on the drums.
Travla has broken free but is adrift and in his own personal maelstrom. All At Sea is tempestuous and sets it to music in an atmospheric, drumless track featuring guitars, reeling voices and sound effects, constructed by Roger.
Travla finds himself in the belly of a beast, featured on Into The Nightwhale. This is an eerie and very proggy track, with Steve playing a bass tuned an octave down to conjure that sea mammal’s plangency. Turning urgent in tempo and orchestral, darkness turns to light and Travla is saved by love. “I wasn’t all at sea, and I hadn’t been in the belly of a whale,” Steve explains, “but I had been through things just as challenging.”
Resolution starts to emerge with Where You Are, one of the first songs recorded for the album. Rocky, romantic and generating a lot of power, it leads Travla to fulfilment and peace in the final part, the serene acoustic guitar track, White Dove. Displaying Steve’s love of Spanish guitar music by composers such as Isaac Albéniz, the track is, as Steve says; “water, it’s wings, it’s freedom.”
As you would expect from a Steve Hackett album, this is a very tasteful and heartfelt release. The nature of the concept and its semi-autobiographical nature allows Steve to release a lot of emotions that are subtly blended throughout the album. Some of the emotion is in the lyrics and their delivery, others are keyed up within the music itself. Steve is quite succinct with the music on this release. Although the music flows seamlessly from track to track, the songs are quite contained within themselves. There are no rip-roaring guitar solos such as on Steve’s classic Everyday, Spectral Mornings, or Sierra Quemada, rather the guitar solos seem to lend themselves to the needs of the narrative of the story and need no further embellishment than that. One of the many successes of the album is the production. It is a very intricate album in many aspects, but the quality of the engineering does not allow any of these elements to overwhelm the others. The music concrete of the sound collages is blended very well with the other styles, and the varied musical styles enhance one another. It almost goes without saying that the standard of the musicianship is extremely high throughout and the vocals are strong. Steve’s trick of having layered vocals often with production applied suits the music well. The lyrics are colourful, literate and often poetic, and tell the tale of Tavla with great aplomb.
The new album is available to pre-order on several different formats, including a Limited CD+Blu-ray mediabook (including 5.1 Surround Sound & 24bit high resolution stereo mixes), Standard CD Jewelcase, Gatefold 180g Vinyl LP & as Digital Album. All feature the stunning cover painting by Denise Marsh. Pre-order now here: https://stevehackett.lnk.to/TheCircusAndTheNightwhale
This is an evocative album full of movement and highly redolent of London in the era after the Second World War and what that particular era became. It is a clever one too; intelligent without being overbearing. The are lots of balances at play which become more apparent with multiple listens. There is the counter balance between the electric and acoustic instruments deployed; the interplay of the music and the found sound elements; and there is the narrative at play, the balancing of the reality and fantasy constituents which comes across very well. In summing up The Circus And The Nightwhale, Steve says: “It’s a lovely journey that starts dirty, scratchy and smoky and becomes heavenly and divine. How can you resist it?”
You can watch a video for People Of The Smoke here: STEVE HACKETT – People Of The Smoke (OFFICIAL VIDEO) (youtube.com)
And there is one for Wherever You Are here: STEVE HACKETT – Wherever You Are (OFFICIAL VIDEO) (youtube.com)
Steve Hackett and his band will tour the world extensively in 2024, including a brand new 16-date UK tour ‘Genesis Greats, Lamb Highlights & Solo’, in October which will see him return to the Royal Albert Hall. He will also return to North America early this year, with European shows booked in for the Summer. For the full list of dates, head to:
http://hackettsongs.com/tour.html
1. People Of The Smoke
2. These Passing Clouds
3. Taking You Down
4. Found And Lost
5. Enter The Ring
6. Get Me Out!
7. Ghost Moon and Living Love
8. Circo Inferno
9. Breakout
10. All At Sea
11. Into The Nightwhale
12. Wherever You Are
13. White Dove
Steve Hackett – electric and acoustic guitars, 12-string, mandolin, harmonica, percussion, bass, vocals
Roger King – keyboards, programming, orchestral arrangements
Rob Townsend – saxophone
Jonas Reingold – bass
Nad Sylvan – vocals
Amanda Lehmann – vocals
Benedict Fenner – keyboards
John Hackett – flute
Malik Mansurov – tar
Craig Blundell – drums
Nick D’Virgilio – drums
Hugo Degenhardt – drums
Release date: 16th February, 2024
Label: InsideOut Music
Formats: CD, Vinyl, Digital, Blu-ray
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